Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll
by C-Unit
Summary: AU! Very eventual RADE! Jade and Robbie start a band, hoping to take the New York music scene by storm! Now they have to deal with hipsters, bad gigs, money, and the harsh realities of making it in the music business. There's also Young Runaways, a much more popular band fronted by Jade's nemesis, Tori Vega. Will Jade and Robbie conquer the world, or fizzle out before they do?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N - Rated M for language, drinking, sexy stuff, etc. Kind of a "light M" but whatever.**

* * *

Sometimes I wonder if there's a weird alternate universe where there's someone named Jade West who grew up on the West Coast. She'd be blonde and skinny and maybe a heiress or something. She'd have a record deal and maybe she'd be an actress and have a super-hot boyfriend.

But I'm not that Jade West. I have dark hair and pale skin and I've been single for a couple of years now. I didn't grow up in Los Angeles or whatever. As soon as I turned 18 and graduated from high school, I moved down from boring Upstate New York to the Big Apple, mainly to try and make it as a star. Whatever that means. I wasn't born into crazy-amazing-superstardom like blonde-heiress Jade. I'm just...talented. But normal.

I wanted to be in movies. I wanted to be in Broadway. I wanted to play the Witch in "Wicked!" or maybe have a role in some indie drama. All the things I knew I was born to do. The life I wanted to lead.

People tell you that it's going to be tough, but when you're convinced of certain things, sometimes you don't listen.

I moved here six months ago. Weekly auditions, hard-scrabble fights to find an agent to hire me. Endless songwriting that went nowhere. No work came my way, unless you count playing a "mean girl" in a local mattress commercial. More and more, it seemed like auditions for an "independent film" were a bait-and-switch to get into porn. It became disheartening. I began to give up.

I found a counter job at a vegan cafe near my tiny-but-still-super-expensive apartment. It's alright, I suppose, but getting up super-early almost every day of the week is still a total pain in my ass. I seem to drink my salary's worth of organic-fair-trade-super-blend-local-oxidized-gluten-free-soy coffee. But it's a living. Not for a long time, I hope.

Leaving my apartment for work, I brace myself against the cold January wind and icy rain that falls in light waves. I pull my coat up and grumble that summer is way, way better. I tread carefully on the icy sidewalk, keep my head down against the wind, and quickly enough, I find myself at work. Thank God it's Friday.

Inside The Chlorophyll Vegan Cafe, it's wonderfully warm, and even better, it's empty. We don't get much of a breakfast crowd on a Friday. The only customer is a homeless guy who sleeps at a table in the back. Behind the counter, putting gluten-free soy cookies in a jar by the cash register is the one friend I have in the whole city. Sandra, my too-perky blonde co-worker. She's nice and likes good music, but she's just so...enthusiastic. About everything.

"Hey!" she exclaims as I hang up my coat in the small break room.

"Hey."

"I have some awesome-amazing news!" she says. I inwardly groan. Her birthday party isn't for another month, but she's been planning it relentlessly and talking about it constantly for I-don't-know-how-long-now.

"What's that?" I ask, heading back out to the counter and clocking in.

"Check it out!" She pulls two bright blue wristbands and plastic tickets from the pocket of her pants. She hands one of each to me. It's for some dance night at a club in the super-yuppie-trendy part of Lower Manhattan.

"Huh." It's all I say. Sometimes I like to push her buttons when she's super-duper-excited for something.

"Not just 'huh'!" she pouts. "An old friend of mine just moved to the city and has a DJing gig here. He gave me a couple of wristbands and VIP tickets. For free."

"He? Old friend?" I tease, layering it thick with innuendo.

"Shut up," she replies with an eyeroll. "What I'm trying to say is that we have free entry and all-we-can-drink at one of the hottest nightclubs in the whole city."

"We're underaged."

"They won't care!" she says, exasperated. "We have the VIP tickets! We know the DJ! They won't check our IDs or anything!"

"You assume I don't have plans tonight. Maybe I have a hot date tonight. One that I can't cancel on," I tell her, crossing my arms in front of my chest.

"Do you?"

"No." It's a quick, obvious admission.

"Then come on," she whines. "It'll be so much fun."

I think of going out into the freezing cold to a pretentious place like this club and having to take the time to get dressed up and the endless losers that will hit on us and all of that nonsense. It doesn't necessarily fill me with confidence or want or need.

But then again, I was just going to sit at home and write music and feel bummed out that I wasn't living my dreams. Be all emo with my emotions and grumble about how I'm poor and how I think there's a meth lab in the apartment down the hall.

"Yeah, why not?" I concede to Sandra, and she squeals and claps her hands together like such a girl, and I groan at what I might have gotten myself into for the night.

* * *

After work, I get dressed in the only things vaguely resembling something that one might go clubbing in. I'm not a clubber. I am not one of those vapid slutty girls who get fucked up from Wednesday to Saturday and have serious daddy issues and probably have nude pictures rolling around the internet.

But I digress.

I have one black dress that hugs my curves and shows off an unhealthy amount of cleavage. I accessorize with various silver pieces of jewellery, mainly necklaces. I pick my warmest coat, because this weather sucks too hard to be real. I think about how this is all pretty much free, and how I'm kind of lucky to be going out tonight anyways, so I grit my teeth against it and head out.

I meet Sandra outside the subway and we head down into it, cheerfully going over each other's outfits. On the train, it seems like every other person is dressed up for a night out. Groups of people drinking out of hidden bottles, being loud and obnoxious, calling attention to themselves.

"Is this what we signed up for tonight?" I ask Sandra, quietly. I nod my head in the general direction of a loud group of people who laugh as a guy makes some rude gestures with his hands.

"Not really. It's more of a lounge place." Saying this, she pulls the wristbands and tickets out of her purse, handing mine over. "More laidback, I think."

"So...what kind of music does your ex play?"

"He's not my ex! He's just a friend. And it's just dance-music stuff."

"You never...?"

"No. Nothing like that. His name's Robbie. He's a good guy. But just an old friend." She went on to explain that they went to the same high-school and were in Band. He also DJed all the school dances and events for extra credit.

I try to picture what a "Robbie" would look like and kind of come up blank. I look over the guy still doing rude gestures and getting laughs from his cronies. Total alpha-male-jock-GQ type. I ask Sandra if Robbie's like that and she laughs.

"So totally not," she says with a giggle. "Think Andy Samberg. Or...yeah...Andy Samberg. With glasses."

"Sounds like a dork."

"A little. He used to carry around this puppet...thing."

"What?"

"Yeah. Totally weird."

"Like a sock puppet?" I ask, still kind of incredulous.

"No, like a real puppet. Rex. He'd say all the stuff that was on Robbie's mind...or something. It's tough to explain."

"Are we going to meet Rex? Please tell me yes."

"Nah, he got rid of that a long time ago. Still...it didn't make him many friends in school, I guess. I was like, the one girl who talked to him."

The train squeals around a curve and into the night as we head downtown. I fruitlessly try to wrap my head around trying to figure out how a guy who had all the attributes Sandra described could even possibly exist.

* * *

The club-lounge-whatever that we roll up to is called "Plush" and has a neon white exterior. We bypass the line - much to my satisfaction as really, really gross plastic-looking girls groan and yell at us in derision - and show off our tickets and wristbands.

To be honest, I'm a little nervous that the bouncer might check our IDs and see that we're underage but he doesn't and the moment passes. We get led in and he tells us to have a good night. I sigh a little sigh of relief, and Sandra throws me a subtle look to say "I told you so".

It's dark and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. Most of the place is bathed in blue light, which makes the white couches placed all around the room glow in an off-putting way. A long, wall-length bar is at the back, and near it is a dancefloor. Perched above the dancefloor is a small DJ booth, empty and Robbie-less. Above the bar, accessible by some stairs, is a VIP area, and that's where Sandra leads me. We take an unoccupied booth by a railing where we can see the dancefloor clearly, and a waiter comes up to take our drink orders.

Thank Christ-Almighty that they're free. Looking at the menu as Sandra orders us both a gin and tonic - I would have preferred beer, or rum, but I keep my mouth shut because she's being a totally awesome friend by letting me be here - the drinks are upwards of $10 - $15 each.

"How did you score these wristbands?" I ask, incredulous.

"Robbie gave them to me."

"And the club just lets people drink this stuff for free?"

She shrugs and looks around.

"We're the only ones with the wristbands. He pulled us a pretty big solid."

"Definitely."

I suddenly get it into my mind that I'm going to get wasted. Because it's free. Because it might be my last night out ever. I shove thoughts of rent and grocery money and scraping by out of my head and decide that I'll enjoy myself tonight.

The waiter comes with our drinks, and right on cue, Robbie-the-DJ takes his spot in the booth, even though the place is still kind of empty because it's a little early. Sandra claps and waves and throws a "woo-hoo" his way. He smiles and gives us the thumbs up. She's right though. He's Andy Samberg with glasses. A skinny, lanky body in skinny, lanky jeans and Converse and that hipster look.

Good for him.


	2. Chapter 2

Robbie plays some general instrumental-electro stuff from his little MacBook station in the DJ booth. It's quiet and atmospheric and background filler, mainly because it's still early in the night. For the supposed hottest nightclub in town and with the lineup outside, you'd think it would be jam-packed with people.

"What's the deal with that?" I ask Sandra, explaining what I thought to her. She shrugs.

"How do you think they get to be the hottest club ever?" she asks back, as if it's a majorly obvious thing. "By making it fake-exclusive."

"Of course," I comment, ornery already. I mean, I've only had two or three drinks. But I guess they're strong. Or it's been a while. Or I'm a lightweight. Or maybe I have no idea.

"He's not a bad DJ, though," I say, curling my lips to show that I'm surprised or impressed or whatever. The dude just looks like a straight-up D-O-R-K though.

"Yeah, he's worked hard at it."

Time passes. The club starts to fill up. Robbie sips at a water bottle every now and then, picking up the energy of the music as more people go in. Wait, he gets us free booze and he won't drink it himself? What a silly dorkus. People start to dance, looking like organisms shifting and blobbing under a microscope.

"I have huge plans for my birthday party," Sandra goes. Her face is flushed red and she won't stop smiling. Must be the drink.

"Yeah?" I ask. My mood's gone from bitter to friendly. Thanks, alcohol! Everything Sandra says is now very interesting. I used to hate talking about her birthday party but now it's okay!

"Yes! Ohmygod, youhavenoidea!" Her words sort of slur together but I can still keep up. "I've gotlike this amazing indiebandplaying. They're the next bigthingIsweartogod!"

"That sounds pretty amazing!" I tell her. We have to start yelling because the noise in the club has gone up a few decibels. What looks like a bachelorette party gets up from the VIP area and heads down to the dancefloor, swelling the numbers. A couple of the girls look at Robbie as if he's actually sexy or something, whispering to each other and grinning and pointing.

"Those girls have a crush on your boyfriend," I tell Sandra with an evil smile on my face, pointing to the girls. She shoves me a little.

"He is _not_ my boyfriend!" she squeals out, so high-pitched that I'm afraid all the dogs in the surrounding area will flock to us. I just cringe and laugh as this Robbie kid does one of those DJ-fist-pump-things before dropping the bass and making the music much more dancey, much more fast paced. A little too much dubstep for my tastes, but the crowd eats it up. The vibe of the place changes, the energy swells. This isn't really a lounge anymore. It's a nightclub like what it's supposed to be. It's a little too infectious for my liking. Is this city turning me into a snobby-snob or a club kid or whatever those girls are?

Maybe I worry too much about that sort of thing.

* * *

Sandra and I - after a few more drinks - move to the dancefloor. I don't think I can drink anymore until I work some out of my system. It feels liberating. To let go. To dance away cares and fears.

The power of music. The reason I love it so much. How it wires in your brain and how a good song can hook you. Music can be a singular experience - with headphones, or alone in your room - or it can be a communal thing, like right now as we dance and cheer with the crowd.

"Come on!" Sandra says, yanking at my hand. She pulls me up and around the crowd, shoving through people, lights throbbing over our eyes. Into the DJ booth we go, where Robert or whatever smiles at us quickly before turning back to his laptop. Sandra and I stand above people and cheer. Pumping our fists with the music, dancing around Robbie and acting like silly girls.

Robbie breaks the music down, slowing down the tempo, making the song more atmospheric, more dragged out. The lights in the club turn to more sombre hues. A female voice hums in tune with the song, instilling a calming effect on me. It actually sounds quite nice. Not a perfect, revelatory thing, but good enough.

"I'm Robbie," he says to me, yelling over the song into my ear. I shake his hand.

"Jade."

"Cool name," he says.

"Thanks," I tell him with my trademark bored eyeroll. I don't know why I do it. Probably because everyone says that about my name. At least he isn't a typical guy - a horndog or whatever - by saying how Jade is his favourite colour and how it totally represents me or something dumb like that. I'm kind of grateful for it.

"So, how do you know Sandra?" he asks me. We begin small talk, with him checking out his DJ thing every now and then. He seems to effortlessly play the songs he wants to with the help of his laptop, and keep up a conversation.

He's pleasant enough, but I was still right about being a giant dork. Ah well.

* * *

The wind has died down, and the freezing rain-sleet-whatever has stopped falling. The night is cool and crisp as Sandra and I stumble outside the club with Robbie frowning behind us.

"Don't slip," he warns as we turn left and start to walk up the street. Sandra and I start singing buy we can't match up the songs properly and start laughing loudly. People walking by us frown and make cringe faces at us, but I don't really care.

"We're _those _people," I shout."

"What people?" Robbie asks, bracing against the cold and adjusting the shoulder bag that holds his laptop.

"You know, those loud stupid drunk people!" I tell him. He's such a dork, he doesn't know anything!

"That's not true," is all he says.

"I'm hungry!" Sandra exclaims, cutting him off. I realize that I'm starving too.

"Me too!" I say. "Oh God I could go for some fucking McDonald's right now!"

"Yes!" Sandra says. She grabs Robbie's sleeves. "Let's go to McDicks! Now!"

"Now!" I add on. He just grins sheepishly.

"Yeah, sure," he says, and both Sandra and I grip on to his sleeves for support in our drunken silliness. It's only for a couple of blocks until we straighten out and let go of his arms as we go on the mythical quest for a McDonald's.

"I bet you feel really special," I tell Robbie as we pass a whole bunch of guys in suits getting into a taxi and checking us out. "Two beautiful women hanging on to you. Center of attention."

He just laughs.

"It's alright, I'm not going to lie."

"Get lots of girls?" I ask him. It's actually kind of mocking and mean but I don't really care.

"Not really," he says with a sheepish look. "I mean, I just moved here and New York girls are..." He looks at me. "Kind of intimidating."

"OH," I say. "And what is that supposed to mean?" He starts flubbing his words and looking kind of confused or whatever, stumbling for an answer.

"THERE!" Sandra yells and points as the big golden arches come into view. Robbie is visibly relieved and pleased that he doesn't have to answer my question. I squeal with delight along with Sandra, and we pick up our pace to get into the warm and florescent restaurant.

* * *

Though Robbie lives a couple of subway stops away, he gets off at mine and Sandra's so that we can get home safe. Which is dorky - he's a total dork have I said that yet? - but still kind of sweet and nice and small-town-ish so I don't make a comment about it. We stop off at Sandra's briefly until she's in the door of her apartment, and then it's down the street for a few blocks to my house.

Robbie and I walk in silence, and I can kind of feel myself sobering up a little. It was a good evening, and hey, this guy isn't a total creep.

"Do you have a job or just DJ or whatever?" I ask him.

"I work at a grocery store," he says. "Like a little bodega."

"Hook me up with free food," I say.

"Yeah, sure."

We're about three minutes from my house when the ice on the sidewalks gets the better of me. I slip, landing on my butt. Super hard. I feel it ache and I groan, sitting in the cold and hating everything.

"You okay?" Robbie asks, offering his hand to me. He pulls me up.

"My ass hurts," I tell him. "There's gonna be a pretty massive bruise there."

"Attractive," he comments with a smirk. I shoot him the Jade-West-patented deathglare but he just keeps on smirking. It's kind-of-cute but I don't want to think those late-night thoughts of romance or anything stupid like that.

"Yeah, so fucking funny," I tell him, brushing myself off.

He walks me back to my apartment, putting up with the grumbling over my cold and sore ass the whole time. He waves goodbye through the lobby doors, and is off into the night.

I sleep in my warm, comfy bed and think about how I'm actually glad I got out for a little bit. About how starting tomorrow, things might change.


	3. Chapter 3

It's a crisp and sunny Wednesday. The snow sparkles and crunches underfoot, my breath steaming out in long columns. I have an audition today. It's for the bad-girl in some indie drama set at a Catholic school. At first I thought this was a bait-and-switch for porn again, but I was able to get a script this time, and it's actually a pretty reasonable movie.

I guess word got around that this is a good movie with a good part. I sigh audibly as I enter the waiting room of the production offices. About fifteen other girls, all looking just like me. All mouthing the same words to the same script. All kind of dressed for the part. And I thought I was being smart by doing the exact same thing.

It all comes rushing forward suddenly. Anger. Anxiety. The death of hope and the death of excitement. Why am I in this whole acting game? Why am I trying to be a star? This. Is. Bullshit.

Everyone wants to be famous. More than ever. I scraped by in school plays! I have actual talent! At least..I think I have talent. And everyone else thinks that they have the guts to sing and dance. Just because they can carry a tune, or pull out some fake tears, or go clubbing all the time.

No.

No, no, no. This sort of thing takes the effort, the blood and sweat and tears that aren't just given to someone. I'm special, dammit! I was born with being the best!

But in this moment, I don't feel special at all. I feel fucking terrible and low and awful and full of hate for every girl who ever looked like me and who thinks that they're the best.

I leave the audition before it happens. I decide then and there to give up on my acting. For the time being at least. Because they're stupid. If I have to compete with everyone who's just like me, than it's not worth it. I know I'm special, and there's something about me that is more special than the things everyone else has.

I just don't know what that is right now. Or how I'm going to make it happen.

This leaves me with the rest of the day to do what I want. After my initial flood of anxiety, I feel strange and excited and strangely...free. I don't feel like there's any doom and gloom. The sun and snow reflect the new-found happiness I feel. After taking the subway back home, I decide to spend the rest of the day out and about, because for the first time since coming here, I feel kind of free, and kind of down for anything.

So I grab some frozen yogurt from my favourite ice cream place and listen to my PearPhone in the park, watching dogs run around in the snow, playing with each other. It starts to get colder, my nose and cheeks turning pink. I have to put on my gloves. Since I'm nearby, I decide to visit Robbie at his job.

It had been a few weeks since the free booze DJ night and me slipping on my ass. With his constant visits to see Sandra at work, Robbie and I had become fast friends. For some reason. I guess I figured I needed to increase my social circle or whatever you want to call it. Plus, he's not from New York, where almost all the guys are terrible and lecherous and so on.

So this time, I visit him at his work. A little Mexican corner store deal with bright stacks of fruit and brands I can't really pronounce. He stocked shelves. He swept the floor. He would man the cash register. He would wear a little red apron I mocked him endlessly about, and he would have a sour-lemon-sucking-face while I did it too.

Fun, like what friends do.

I enter and the door chimes. I rub the snow off my feet, seeing Robbie's tall, slender frame behind the counter looking bored. The noise from outside gets muffled as the door shuts. It's just the sounds of traffic now, and some Spanish song on the tinny speakers in the ceiling.

"I thought you had an audition," he says. I shrug.

"I bailed."

"What?" He practically squeals at me. Like his life depends on it or whatever.

"Yeah, I just...had a little crisis." He gives me a concerned look but I wave it away with my hand. I boost myself up on the counter and plop my butt down on it. A customer comes up and gives me a look, but Robbie rings up their groceries without comment. They leave, throwing me one more look of disdain or whatever.

I just roll my eyes.

"Yeah, so, like, every girl there looked like me, and I didn't want to be there anymore, because auditioning sucks, and I just know that there's the right thing out there for me. I'll know it when I see the role or whatever," I tell him. He nods, still not placated because oh-my-God-I've-abandoned-my-life-plans, but he seems to understand a little, at least.

"Are you sure about the whole acting thing? What about singing?" he asks me. Sandra had me sing for him at work and he seemed impressed.

"Maybe. I dunno."

A couple more customers come, asking for cigarettes. One of them, a young guy in a jogging outfit, gives me a once over and I do my deathstare at him. It works, because he totally stops doing it. Robbie notices, scratching his head a little and smiling wide.

"What are you doing in twenty minutes?" he asks me. I shrug and tell him nothing's up. "Well, my shift's ending when Rodrigo comes in. Come over. It'll be, like, a housewarming party, I guess."

"You still haven't had a housewarming party?"

"Nope."

"You're such a loser."

"Whatever. Wanna come over anyways?"

"I dunno..." I say, sort of faking interest by looking at my fingernails.

"I'll buy dinner."

"Alright, you got a deal."

* * *

Robbie's apartment is a basement shithole in Brooklyn, maybe about a twenty minute walk from my place. There's a weird smell of potatoes or something coming from the hallway, but I don't say anything as he unlocks the door and lets me in. He hangs up our coats, and I quietly thank God that at least it's super warm.

Typical boy apartment. Clothes everywhere. Dishes in the sink. He seems like such a together guy outside his apartment but the sad truth is that all dudes are slobs when they live alone. But, much like my apartment, it's fine enough. Tiny enough that there's barely any room to move. At least the bathroom doesn't look like a terrifyingly mysterious hellhole.

"Sorry about the mess," he says, picking some clothes off the floor and stuffing them under his mattress.

"You're a guy. I get it."

"Yeah, I had a couch I dragged in off the street, but it smelt way too bad and it had to go."

I roll my eyes at that, and begin to scan the rest of the room. A drum kit. His laptop and DJ setup. Posters of bands I haven't heard of on the wall. A corkboard with various ticket stubs and photos on it. Some of a pretty blonde girl and him together.

"Girlfriend?" I ask him, pointing at one where they're sharing a milkshake.

"Ex-girlfriend."

"Ah."

"Her name was Meagan. She was a kind of bitch by the end. But what about you? Any big-city boyfriends?" The way he changed the subject so quickly means that he's still kind of smarting from that one, so I don't prod him further. Even though I totally want to.

"Nah, boys are jerks."

"Yeah, we are," he says with a stupid smile. I look around once more, pointing to the drum kit.

"Can you play?" I ask him.

"A little." He goes over and sits at it, looking tiny and cramped. He hits away, giving off a regular drum-roll like you hear in radio contests.

"Cool."

He points to the DJ equipment.

"There's a keyboard there. Just turn it on if you want to play it a little bit," he tells me. He starts playing a simple beat which sounds a little bit like a heartbeat. He gives me another silly, stupid grin and I sigh at him. "What? I liked your voice when I heard it. And I hear you play the piano, so..."

"Fine, but I'm definitely picking the most expensive restaurant ever for our dinner."

I go an sit at the DJ equipment, pulling a very small keyboard out from under a pile of papers and magazines. I turn it on and set it to electric piano. I play a simple, pleasant arpeggio to go along with his drum beat.

"Sing!" he calls out. I glare at him, because no one tells me what to do. He misses this one, and just keeps smiling at me. I sigh and roll my eyes, and listen to the song a little more. Trying to find some kind of inspiration or whatever.

_Da-da-da _I hum along briefly. _Da-da-dee-da-daaa._

I stop playing and turn off the keyboard. The drumming stops eventually.

"What?" he asks.

"I can't think of anything."

"Come on!" he says with an encouraging tone.

"I'm hungry. Buy me dinner."

"Now?"

"Now."

His shoulders slouch, but he gets up from the drums, and I turn off the keyboard. We grab our coats, and he locks the door behind us.

"I still think you're good," he says. He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks the floor as we head down the hallway. I decide we should have Thai food.

And so the rest of the day goes.


	4. Chapter 4

It continues pretty much constantly. Playing music at Robbie's. Sometimes he'll bring his laptop over to my place and we'll play on my own keyboard. It's all for fun. I never come up with any lyrics, and usually we're eating Chinese takeout while we fiddle around. I throw down some _da-da-das_ and he hums along, and nothing more. He saves everything on a hard drive and just shrugs when I make fun of him for it.

Thankfully, he never makes a move on me. Never construes our hanging out to be anything else other than just hanging out. Sometimes he'll make a sex joke or ask about being boyfriend and girlfriend but it's always in the most ridiculous way ever. Sometimes just thrown into the middle of a random conversation.

I like him for it. He's become a good friend. The city feels a touch less lonely.

I tell Sandra this, and of course, she immediately sets me up on a date with a friend of hers.

"You can't just be friends with cute boys!" she squeals in her blonde hair and wide-eyed way. "You gotta date them!"

"Cute?" I ask, incredulous that she would think that dorky Robbie Shapiro would ever be attractive to anyone. My wide-eyed shock doesn't stop the date from being set up, though. Some dude she's told me about before but I had forgotten about previously.

The date does not go well at all. For one thing, he's a total Manhattan-business-guy. He pays for everything, luckily, because the place he takes me to is stuffy and fancy-frou-frou and full of people he knows from work. I get a total "American Psycho" vibe from him, complete with a trading of business cards and discussion about clothing.

He has no personality. It's all so boring very, very, very boring and it annoys me for reasons I can't quite fathom. An itch in the back of my head. I excuse myself and go to the bathroom, taking my purse. Once inside the very-clean and septic smelling bathroom, I pull out my phone and call Robbie, who I know is at home doing jack-diddly because he's a nerd.

"Hey!" he says, a little too gleefully. "How was the date? Over already?"

"Still going on," I tell him.

"Whah?" he starts, but I interrupt him to explain the whole thing and how it's terrible and boring.

"So just leave."

"I can't."

"Why? I'm sure you've ditched dates before."

"I just...what would I tell Sandra?"

"That your date was doggy-doo?"

"That's no fun!" I whine. "Plus he's such a yuppie. I want to stick it to him."

"So? What can I do? Why would you call me and...?"

"Shutup for a second," I interrupt. It comes to me, an idea that lights up like a cartoon lightbulb.

I tell him the plan. He hems and haws and complains about how stupid it is, but because he's a total dork he still agrees to do it.

I return to the table and the guy has ordered me dessert. I hate it when people order for me. I swallow down the urge to smack him.

God, why can't I ever remember his name?

"Sorry it took so long," I say. He smirks.

"No worries," he replies. He's good looking in that calculated way, but that doesn't really do anything for me, I guess. I eat the dessert and even though it's good, I don't give him the satisfaction that he's done anything nice for me.

"How's the chocolate mousse cake?" he asks. I just nod.

"It's...okay."

"The New York Times rated it the best dessert of the month," he tells me.

"That's...cool?"

"Of course it is."

This sort of conversation has been going on all night, and continues on its boring-dumb course until...

"Jade?!" asks Robbie from behind me. And oh-my-god, he's dressed in tuxedo with a monocle. And he has a cane. And a British accent! "Jade West? Is that you, my dear?"

My date looks stunned.

"Timothy!" I exclaim. "I never expected you here!"

"Well!" he huffs. "I'm thinking of buying this restaurant."

"With all your money?" I ask.

"Just some of my money!" He does a very British laugh that sounds like "oh-ho-ho".

"Hello," says my date. "I'm Richard Zahn." Richard! That was it! He shakes Robbie's hand. "You guys know each other?" I'm at a loss at what to say, but Robbie steps in.

"My father owned the preparatory school she went to, and I met her when we were given a tour."

"Do you still own that nice little helicopter?" I ask Robbie/Timothy.

"Newer model, but, yes. The Princess of Monaco borrowed it for Cannes and stained the interior with caviar," he replies. I nearly spit out my food and laugh.

"Can you take me for a ride on it? Like old times?" I ask. He smiles.

"Of course, my dear Jade," he replies.

"Uh...what?" asks Richard as I get up to leave. "Wait...can I come?"

"Sorry old chap!" Robbie says, patting him on the shoulder. "It's only got two seats!"

And we're out of there so fast I almost knock over a table.

Later, we both sit in a tiny, cheap, kind of dirty falafel place, laughing over everything. It's the tastiest food I've ever eaten, even better than whatever dessert some newspaper said was the best ever. I smile and laugh at Robbie as he flicks his monocle around like a coin and spins his top hat around with his cane. Such a dork.

But the cool kind of dork.

* * *

The fateful day finally arrives. Sandra's super-duper-birthday party. It's been on the tip of her tongue for days now. She's been more excited than ever, if that's possible. We both get the day off of work and meet Robbie in front of the small theatre she's rented out.

Basically any money she has for the next two months is gone, but she doesn't seem to mind. There's an area where some instruments are set up, and every hipster and person she's ever known is here. Even Richard's here - slumming with some of his business buddies - giving us both dirty looks that we smile at.

Robbie and I lean against the bar, sipping illegally-served booze out of our cups. Some indie-rock plays from the speakers, quietly. Everyone's waiting for the band that Sandra hasn't stopped talking about for the past little while. They're about to "make it big" or whatever, but they're still underground enough to do this party before fame and fortune or whatever. Mainly because Sandra once dated the lead guitarist or something.

"What are they called again?" I ask Robbie when he mentions that they were mentioned on some music blog.

"Young Runaways."

"That's a stupid name."

"Of course it is," he says with disdain. I fill up our cups from the draft tap when the bartender isn't looking. It might be cheap in the first place, but we're still starving artists or whatever.

"They have a couple of good songs," Robbie says.

"That's it? A couple?" I roll my eyes.

"They only have a four-song EP out now," he replies. As if everyone knows about it and its super-important news. I grimace at being out of the loop and sip at my beer.

"Whatever," is all I say. Some hipster dudes in bad trucker hats come up to me, almost shoving Robbie out of the way.

"What are you drinking there?" they ask. I give my deathglare but they're oblivious.

"Why?" I ask.

"Looks good," says another one.

"Yeah, looks good," says yet another one.

"Like the lady sipping it," they all chime in. They high five and pat each other on the back.

"You like The Decemberists?" the main-head-leader dude asks. He's got a beard and thick framed glasses. "I've got tickets if you wanna go see a real band at a real party."

"Never heard of 'em," I say. Sipping my beer, I look for Robbie. He's disappeared behind the wall of douchebaggery that's surrounded me. The guys laugh, a silly little chorus.

"Never heard...?" he asks, incredulous. "They're only the most important indie folk group of the..."

"Yeah, don't give a flying fuck," I say, pushing through them to a little closer to the stage area. I see Robbie's massive hair and punch his arm as I move to his side.

"Fun?" he asks.

"Shut the hell up."

There's some of that telltale squealing from Sandra, from somewhere. Suddenly, it's upon us.

"Oh my gosh you guys!" Sandra comes up to us, looking more than a little flustered. "The band's running late!"

"That'll teach 'em to drive around Manhattan," I deadpan with a smirk. Robbie just rolls his eyes at me.

All we do these days is disdain and eyerolls. It's like our little thing.

"What am I going to do?" Sandra squeals, gripping my arm really hard in some kind of death grip. I yank my arm away.

"Nothing. They'll show up."

"That's not the point!" she says. She waves her arm around at all the gathered hipsters. They look bored, annoyed. Someone in the crowd laughs. A bottle is dropped and shatters. I see the guy with the beard sighing and looking at his watch, thinking about The Decembers or whatever.

"What do you want me to do about it?" I ask. I pour as much annoyance as I can into the question as I can muster.

"You're musical, right?" She looks to Robbie too. "Right?" He shrugs. "You could perform, like, a song or two until the band gets here."

"Uhhh..." I hestitate, but Sandra grips my arm even harder.

"Please?" she hisses out, her eyes wide and pleading. She looks to Robbie. "Pretty, pretty please?"

I look at Robbie and he's looking back, unreadable. Every fibre of my body is saying no in the most empathetic way possible. But still...she's my friend. And it's not like I really care if I impress anybody in this room anyways. And I want her to have a good party.

"Alright," I say. Immediately she hugs me, holding me tight and squealing into my ear. When she lets go, I beckon Robbie to follow me as we head towards the little performing area.

"Come on dorkus," I tell him as we look at the instruments. "I'll do keyboards."

"Drums, I guess..." he trails off. He goes and picks up the sticks that were on the snare and sits at the stool. He taps the kickdrum a little to see if it works. It's _thunk-thunk-thunk_ gets a couple of ironic cheers from the crowd.

I look at the keyboard, tapping the keys. Nothing comes out. A microphone next to it doesn't carry my voice. I look for power buttons, but can't find any. I also look to Robbie for help, but as he's getting up, some super-skinny kid with terrible red hair, in tight jeans and glasses approaches me. God, if he tries to ply me with tickets or something...

"I'll help," he says. "I'm kind of a whiz at this tech stuff."

"Alright," I shrug out, and he does help. As we all plug in cords and follow instructions and hit buttons to set things up, Robbie and I discuss what song we're going to play.

"Hurry up!" someone yells in the crowd, and I grimace at what I think Sandra's face looks like.

"How about Summertime Sadness? You like that one, right?" Robbie throws out.

"Nah...what about...no...that won't do it."

"Midnight City?" Robbie asks. And yeah, that doesn't sound so bad. Everyone here probably likes that song. It's like catnip for poser-hipster-losers, but it's actually a good song too.

"I can program something into the sampler that'll sound like the bassline or whatever," says the redheaded kid.

"Yeah, okay. Thanks, by the way," Robbie says as we finish up and he heads back to the drum kit. I get up to the keyboard and tap the keys. Sounds come out this time. I fiddle with the modulation and other stuff until it sounds sort-of-like how the song might sound.

"Um...hi," I say into the microphone.

"You're hot!" yells a guy from the crowd. Other guys laugh.

"Yeah, thanks...um...I guess we'll play until the band gets here." Some groans rise from the crowd, but I kind of ignore them. The guy with the red hair starts the sampler, and the song starts.

_Waiting in a car__  
__Waiting for a ride in the dark__  
__The night city grows__  
__Look and see her eyes, they glow_

So far, it seems to be going okay. Nothing special. Like I thought, it's a song that everyone really likes, and recognizing the song has some people moving and giving the occasional cheer, at least.

_Waiting in a car__  
__Waiting for a ride in the dark__  
__Drinking in the lounge__  
__Following the neon signs_

Robbie's giving that dork-tastic smile of his. God, he's actually enjoying himself, isn't he? Well, I guess it's not so bad. Just like in our rooms, only, you know, not. I was born to be on a stage, I suppose, and it gives me a little enjoyment. It's performing, but without the auditions or the casting people or the advertisements. It's DIY.

_Waiting for a roar__  
__Looking at the mutating skyline__  
__The city is my church__  
__It wraps me in the sparkling twilight_

We do the rest of the song and fade out a long finish. People clap politely and I say "thank you" into the microphone. Robbie, like the dork he is, drops a drumstick and it makes a noise. I glare at him and he gives me a sheepish look. At this moment, Sandra hops onto the tiny stage and grabs the microphone.

"The band's here! Thanks, Jade and Robbie!" she says, almost too-excited for it to be truly thankful.

A lot of people suddenly come up on to stage, and they're young and dressed all hip and look stupidly cool in their nice clothes. I assume they're the band.

"Hi," says a girl who comes up to me. She's super-good looking. Big brown eyes and perfect cheekbones. "I'm Tori. Thanks for warming her up for me." She points to the keyboard and flashes a billion-dollar smile.

I decide immediately that I don't like her very much.

"I'm Jade," I grumble out at her. My eyes move from her to the rest of her band. Some black guy with dreads picks up a guitar and fiddles with it - Sandra's former boyfriend, I assume. A very curvy girl with amazingly tall shoes plucks at a bass, sending thick reverberations in the air.

And then there's the drummer. He shakes hands with Robbie, and the two couldn't look more different. Robbie's pale and has those stupid curls. This guy, with his broad build, olive skin, and great shag of hair, looks aloof and charming and awesome.

"That's Beck," says Tori, who knowingly smiles at me. I roll my eyes to hide my blush. "He's single."

"Good to know," I deadpan at her. I stomp over to Robbie and yank him away from Beck, unable to stop myself from throwing a smile towards the sexy, well-dressed drummer. I notice that Robbie stares down the curvy girl with the shoes, blushing madly in that sheepish way. Yeah, he's got a crush.

Pulled towards the bar and next to that redheaded guy who helped us out, Robbie gets more cups of beer as the band sets up. They're definitely less awkward than we were, and seem more set up.

"Hi!" Tori exclaims into the microphone. Everyone cheers, much more loudly than they did for us. The redheaded guy in tight jeans gets a beer from Robbie, and so do I.

"Looking good!" the guy says to his cup before sipping.

"Who are you?" Robbie asks him.

"Sinjin. Sinjin Van Cleef." They shake hands.

"Yeah, don't care anymore," I say.

"I like a little spice in my lady salads," he tells me with a waggle of his eyebrows.

"Better get your order somewhere else," I snarl. He laughs.

"Alright!" says Tori from the stage. "We're Young Runaways!" More cheers. "We have an album coming out on Ferment Records in a few weeks! Here's the first single!" More cheers, as an electronic beat kicks in and the song starts up.

_I'm marching through the branches in a fit of wanderlust  
To see you in a black hole reaching out for something just  
Silhouettes of neighbors dancing in disgust_

Robbie's bobbing his head to the music and I can see him mouthing the words along with Tori's singing. I have to begrudgingly admit that the song is actually pretty good. Following Robbie's gaze, I see that he's staring at the bassist with the shoes. She does look good, but she also looks like Tori a little, which makes me kind of dislike her.

_I'm sure you recognize my noise and you heard about the pit  
Been told to be afraid of everything that lives within  
But it's much worse where you are  
So will you go for it?_

That drummer though. He is very, very good looking. And probably on the same level as Robbie in terms of skill, at least. I lean into Robbie and yell over the song into his ear.

"You fuck the bassist, I fuck the drummer," I tell him. He sputters out his beer onto Sinjin or whatever his name was.

Just the reaction I was looking for._  
_

"Now, go dance!" I yell again, and shove him into the crowd. He yelps loudly and I follow him. I see Sandra dancing around and being happy, which is good. I'm going to enjoy this night.

* * *

A/N - Songs are "Midnight City" by M83, and "The Pit" by Silversun Pickups.


	5. Chapter 5

It's the afternoon after Sandra's party, and it's the first nice day of spring. I sit on the front steps of my apartment building, sipping on coffee and watching the world go by. I keep a light coat on because of the cool breeze. But the sun is out and it warms the air, and the sky is a beautiful blue.

From down the street, I see Robbie turn the corner and head towards me. He seems...too happy. He bobs. He saunters. It might even be said that he is strutting. He's got that big dumb Robbie grin on his face.

He has more coffee in his hands, two paper cups. He gives me mine and sits down on the step next to me. Not saying anything, but still being all smiley and happy. He's looking alright in a striped hoodie and baggy jeans.

But why would I care about how he looks? As long as he's not a total fashion-victim-loser.

"Why are you so happy?" I ask, the silence and coffee slurping being too much to bear.

"Can't a man just be happy?" he asks back. But there's that mischievous twinkle in his eye.

"No. Not you, anyway."

"Maybe it's because the sun's shining and all of that. Just because you're a grumpy gus..."

"I am not grumpy!" I say, starting on the coffee he's given me. "I'm just...paranoid of your happiness."

He just shrugs and gives an even bigger, more idiotic smile.

"What?!" I ask. He's being mysterious. Oh my god! "Oh my GOD! You had sex with that bassist or whatever!"

He nearly spits out his coffee, and begins to splutter all over himself.

"First of all," he starts, once he's got the ability to breathe back, "I didn't sleep with her. I found out her name is Trina, though. Her sister's Tori. The singer."

Young Runaways were a big hit, and I begrudgingly enjoyed the songs they played. Maybe I was a little buzzed but still. They were too good and everyone in the band was so darn good looking that it was annoying.

Except the drummer. With his hair and his smile and the really, really cool way he dressed. Yeah, that didn't bug me at all. Not one bit.

"So, tell me!" I exclaim. I punch him on the arm.

"I'm happy because last night I had a revelation," he says. He looks almost...wistful? Nostalgic?

"Taking a shit isn't a revelation, dorkus." He deflates and it makes me smile.

"Not that." He looks at me, with that stupid smile again. For a moment - and fucking hell I don't know why - I blush.

"What?!" I plead, tugging at his hoodie.

"I decided that we should start a band." He looks at me expectantly. The only noises are the streets of New York.

"You're joking," I tell him.

"I'm not joking."

"You're crazy, then."

"Not at all. It came to me right before I fell asleep. I'm still not used to sleeping in the city yet, so I always have trouble falling asleep. But it came to me, and that was it. I slept like a little baby."

"Yeah?" I ask, genuinely interested. I had trouble sleeping the first little while I was here, too.

"Yeah. I thought that it was the best idea I've ever had...and I fell asleep. With a smile on my face. The perfect way to end my day. I'm just that sure."

He turns to the street and sips at his coffee, looking at it like he was high or just noting the immensity of the universe for the first time.

"You're serious?" I ask him.

"As a heart attack."

"Well, then you really are crazy," I say, with a big note of dismissal in my tone. He turns to me, offended. Actually sticking up for himself. There's conviction in his eyes.

"What's so crazy about that?" he asks.

"Well, what's the point of starting a band?"

"To perform? To not live in poverty? To make music and be in front of a crowd and see the world?" he asks, his voice taking on a weird pitch.

"There are a million bands in this city that never make it, and we'd just be another one of them!" I say...although my voice is faltering. It's proof that his idea is starting to burrow deep into me.

"So...then...so what?" he asks. "I don't know about you, but I had _fun_ last night. Even just the one stupid song. I have fun playing with you and practising songs and just...hanging out."

"You're serious?"

"Don't you have fun with me?" he asks. And he's got a weird puppy-dog look on his face that I can't really ignore.

"Well, yeah..."

"So then we'll start a band together!" he calls out. I sigh into my coffee. "With your voice, and my drumming, and Sinjin working technical stuff..."

"Wait, who? Sinbad?" I ask.

"Sinjin! That guy that helped us out last night?"

And it comes back to me. The red hair. The tight jeans. The eyebrow waggle.

"Now I know you're joking," I tell him. There's the tiniest, dumbest measure of disappointment.

"I am so not joking! So, so, so, so, so not, not, not, not joking!" he exclaims. "We can...do this. It's...friggin' perfect! We'll be superstars!"

"Ugh...I just don't..."

"With your voice," he says, "Anything is possible. We'll be the best band in the universe!"

More sounds of the street fill the air as my mind wheels through all the ways to deflect this ridiculousness. I hate him for getting me interested. And for flattering me so much. Damn him.

"Well," I say. "We can't just be the band, the two of us!"

"Some great bands are just two people! The White Stripes, Crystal Castles, Matt and Kim, Purity Ring...think about it! Plus, we can get Sinjin to sample and play pre-recorded things if we need that extra kick!"

I sigh, utterly defeated.

"It's not like I was doing anything better, anyways," I say, with all the wind removed from my sails. God, I hate him sometimes.

He pumps his fist and attempts to give me a high-five. I throw him the deathstare and he pulls his hand back.

* * *

Robbie tells me that we'll be writing and practising and playing at every waking moment. Well, it was more of demand, really. He softened the blow by buying me pizza, but he complained that he was now a special type of poor and will be living through his emergency stash of instant ramen for the next twenty days.

"Welcome to my stupid life," I just tell him as I slowly but surely ate the greasy slices of pepperoni and bacon deep-pan pizza. I think of my own depleting supply of bagels and peanut butter and wince, thinking that I might have to spend my last $100 on groceries for the next two weeks.

I tell Sandra about our band idea, and typical of her ways, she squeals in excitement.

"I'll totally help out in any way!" she says, her hand gripping my arm and her eyes bugging wide. "I'll be like...a roadie or something."

"Maybe you can be Sinjin's groupie," I say. She grimaces at that - he had tried to put the moves on her at her party, telling her that she could be "a very special birthday girl" - and it makes me laugh. "Like we'll ever need a roadie. Maybe someone to cheer loudly at a show or something."

This just makes her spiel off into a tangent about how she heard the Young Runaways on the radio and how Robbie and I _could be just like them_ and it's enough to make me gag. If I'm ever like Ms. Tori Cheekbones, you can just put a gun to my head and paint the walls with my brains.

Robbie meets me outside the cafe after work. Sandra waves goodbye to us as she crosses the street, heading off on a date she'd mentioned the other day. Some guy named Dan who's trying out to be a TV star or something or other.

"It's eleven at night. You can't expect us to practise now!" I grunt at him, adding emphasis to how tired I am. I think about batting my eyelashes, or doing something stupidly girly just to sway him, but I doubt that'll work.

"No, no, no," he says. He pulls a crumpled flyer out of his back pocket and hands it to me. It's black and white and skeevy-looking. It's for a DJ show, on all night.

"You're kidding me," I say. "You want us to go to this?"

"Yep."

"Again. You're kidding me, you want us to go to this?"

He sighs, and he gets that determined look in his eyes that makes me feel all funny and self-conscious and weird inside.

"If we're going to make it, we have to live and breathe music. We have to be musical every single moment of every single day. We will have to believe in the power of music, good and bad and all of that. Do what you love, love what you do."

He looks so sincere, I decide for once in my life to not make a snarky comment, to not drag him down.

"Alright, alright, alright," I give in. "Even though I'm tired and smell like sweat and flour, we'll go."

He goes for a high-five, and this time I reluctantly give it to him. We walk off into the still-cold New York night, wondering where the hell the future's taking us.


	6. Chapter 6

Robbie and I begin spending way too much time together. We drag my keyboard over to his place, and set up a little music-play area in his tiny apartment. Luckily, he seems to take more pride in it, and it becomes less of a mancave than before. There's none of that bachelor smell, and I can walk around without stepping on plates or garbage.

We play so much music.

Truth be told, when I had given up on my dream of "performing", I sort of put music to the side, and had gotten rusty. But now, with hours upon hours of writing, rehearsals, playing cover songs, and fiddling with the black and white keys that lined up my life...well...I was getting good again.

Robbie wasn't too bad himself. He was kind of a basic drummer when we started, but as we went on with every-single-day being an "us" day, he began to become a more complex drummer. Like me, he just needed to shake the rust off.

Around this time, the Young Runaways exploded in popularity. They were everywhere now. Robbie and I would be walking down the street, and oh look, there's a row of flyers put up advertising their upcoming album. Every time we were able to finagle ourselves into a club or a DJ night or someone's house party, their hit song - "Rush" - would come up and cheers would spread across the room.

"We _knew_ them!" Robbie would exclaim and I would just slap him upside the head because we didn't actually know them at all, meeting them that _one time_. "We knew them..._before they were famous_!" he'd then exclaim and I'd just want to slap him harder.

I also start seeing Sinjin more than I could ever possibly want to. While not really present at our music sessions, he started...hanging out with us? Is that the best way to say it? He's usually good for getting us things like booze, or the occasional ticket to a show. But for us to pay him back means that he gets to call us friends or whatever.

"You're not actually in the band, you know," I tell him, like, all the time. He just shrugs and does that weird smile he does and it irks me to no end. But he does help me connect Robbie's DJing laptop to my keyboard to help us record things and to change up our sound a little bit. So I guess he's not that bad. Even if he won't shutup about Young Runaways' bassist, the curvy girl named Trina. Apparently she wears those short-shorts all the time and that is just too much information to ever possibly care about. And he's always texting! Who the hell does a guy named Sinjin have to text?!

So, yeah, I'm in a band. A band with only two people and no name and only two completed songs, but yeah. I'm in a band. At least it's something to tell people.

* * *

"How about...uh..." Robbie thinks out loud as he sips chocolate soy milk from his bed, "How about 'Killer Croc'?"

"How about no?" I retort back. Practising and writing had petered out, and now we were just fiddling around back at Robbie's place. "Isn't that a Batman villain anyways?"

He hums the tune we've been figuring out, looking out into space. I tap some notes on my keyboard, not really interested.

"Sex Bob-omb?" he asks, but he dismisses it almost immediately. "The Butts? Nah. The Hardcores? Ugh."

"Yeah, those all suck."

"You come up with a name then!" he exclaims in his big whiny voice.

"The Go-Nowheres." He just gives me a dirty look, mainly because I keep asking him what the point of all of this is if we're going nowhere.

See? Inside jokes? I can be friends with people.

"Lenin and Stalin," I say.

"Too political," he retorts, right off the bat.

"Well then I don't fucking know!" I put my palms on the keys and they make a long, loud church-organ _brrraaammm_.

"Me either. I'm usually good for these things. Dammit."

"Whatever," I say. I get up and stretch out, feeling my muscles loosen from sitting down at the keyboard for almost the whole night. I go over to Robbie's - pretty nice - stereo and hook up my PearPhone to it. I play a good song that Sinjin had told me about, and lean in close to sort out volume. I notice something over one of the knobs.

"Hmm," I say out loud, without meaning to.

"What?" he replies, his voice kind of small and distant behind me.

"How about we call ourselves 'The Bias Fine'? Or just 'Bias Fine'?" He contemplates a little.

"Nah, not feeling it." He's right, I'm already hating it, giving it a few seconds. "Wait! What else is on the stereo dial? Anything cool?"

I look around for a bit, but can't find anything suitable. He gets up and moves over to the stereo too, and looks closely at the parts. A total nerd.

"Oh man!" he exclaims. He points to small LED lights that are next to a volume control, vertical to one another with a different function. "'Reset Counter Memory'."

It doesn't sound...terrible? I let him know.

"Reset Counter Memory," I say.

"Reset Counter Memory," he says right back.

"The Counter Memory."

"The Counter Memories!"

"Counter Memories!" I exclaim.

It's a little stupid and we did it a little backwards, but we have our band's name. I'm back to being excited about it. Which is totally weird, but I'm accepting it.

* * *

"I mean, it's an alright name, I guess," Sandra says as we walk down the warm, late night street to our first gig. It feels like spring now, with warm air and that just-rained smell. The lights of the street reflect off of puddles, shining in slick cement. Robbie walks ahead of us, a snare and a kick-drum slung over his shoulders. He looks like he's dying from the weight of it all, the nerd. Sinjin is next to him, seemingly texting and carrying thick wires at the same time.

But we manage to make it to a small, terrifyingly messy dive-bar called "Choo Choo Charlies". It's not a big place, and the people here are gross and old and sad looking. We set up on the tiny stage, constantly bumping into each other as we put our pieces together.

"Hurry the fuck up!" some terrifying biker-dude calls out. He has soup in his beard and stains all over him. He might not be a biker. He might actually be homeless.

"My birthday party was in a nicer place than this," Sandra says, for like the 4th time, with a look on her face telling me that she smells something completely foul.

"We know," Robbie, Sinjin, and I groan out at the same time.

"But whatever, gotta start somewhere, right?" she says as she puts the finishing touches with Sinjin.

"I thought roadies were supposed to really like the band," Robbie says.

"Or is that groupies?" Sinjin asks without looking up from duct-taping a cable up to the floor so we don't trip over it and unplug everything.

"I thought bands were supposed to have sound checks," I say, disgruntled.

"Clearly, they've never heard of the term," Robbie says, that same bad-smell-look on his face.

But we set up. Sinjin gets access to the lighting board, and he dims the lights for Robbie and I. There are very few polite claps. Deep in the darkness, someone vomits. The splash of it echoes throughout, and there's laughter.

"Hi!" I say into the microphone. "We're Counter Memories."

"You're hot! Take it off!" comes a deep, growling, old-man voice.

"Yeah, thanks," is my only reply.

Robbie starts off on the drums and we begin to play our music. Kind of sad-sack piano and drums acoustic stuff, but whatever. Sinjin turns the lights to a deep blue and purple, and Sandra takes her place slowly swaying in front of the stage to our tunes.

No one joins her. After we're done, no one really claps or pays attention to us. We pack up our gear and go up to the bartender. We get $200 for it. $15 goes to Sandra and Sinjin each, and the rest goes to a band fund that Robbie and I set up at a bank. Technically I didn't even get paid for this, because it's not like I can spend the money on anything good.

* * *

It's a couple of hours later and we all sit in a booth at a 24-hour breakfast place. Sinjin chows down on a massive plate of scrambled eggs and ketchup, and the rest of us have various miscellaneous breakfast things.

We don't really talk, and Robbie looks completely depressed and sad and all those adjectives. Like he didn't realize it would suck this much and now cold reality has finally set in. He wants to be in a band, but I can see that he doesn't want people to hate the band. He wants to be loved and things to be happier.

It's all painted on his face, and I'm suddenly taken aback by how easily I read it. How much his sadness is actually bringing me down.

When did I become such a tool?


	7. Chapter 7

I had no idea that so many biker bars existed in New York. But somehow, Robbie and I keep playing them, almost constantly. Tiny basement shitholes with people who don't care or don't pay attention. I ask Robbie about it one night as we're packing up. He's the one who has been booking gigs for us, and his face turns sour when I bring it up.

"These are the only places that will take us," he tells me.

"Alright. I'm just sick at looking at so many dirty beards," I say back to him. He smiles, but like every other smile these days, it's a little tight, a little sad.

Robbie's been down since our first gig. He doesn't give up, but he gets...kind of strange. He gets weirdly quiet and focused. And he doesn't whine. Even though whining is the greatest thing ever invented. But he's like a laser beam, focused tight and close during rehearsals and song-writing sessions and more dive-bar gigs.

I hate to admit it, but the constant playing, the sacrifice of a social life to spend time only with Robbie, Sandra, and Sinjin starts to pay off. While the audiences at our shows never really grow or change, we get better at playing to them. We run smoothly. Our setup times shrink. We become a well-oiled machine.

We're kind of almost a real band. We make about $100 - $200 a show and throw it all in the big savings account or whatever. Every week or so we use the money to go out and have a real meal for dinner, all four of us. Sandra, Sinjin, Robbie, and I. We're like a little family at these meals - a dysfunctional family - and I kind of like it. It's better than the endless ramen noodles and leftovers from work I've been living off of.

It's constant. It's kind of ridiculous. But deep down beneath it all - sad Robbie and the endless tired hours - it's kind of fun, too.

* * *

Another damn bar, but this one is more disgusting and more seedy than all the other ones combined. The lights barely work. There's a chemical smell that's familiar but still unpleasant, like a science-class accident. Both bathrooms are out of order - leading people to piss in the hallways outside the bathrooms.

"Well, at least they don't poop in there," Sinjin says, looking over my shoulder and peering over his glasses to watch a big burly guy urinate on the floor. "They have some decorum." I'm too grossed out to even respond. Sandra grimaces, her face grey and green.

"Come on, we'll be late," Robbie says, and we head to the stage. We set up, and turn to face the disinterested audience. We can't really see their faces because of the lights, but we can hear them coughing, spitting, talking quietly. They smoke, even though indoor smoking's been banned for a while now. I get up to the microphone, and quietly sigh to myself.

"Uh, hi," I say. "We're Counter Memories."

"Yer hawt!" someone yells from the crowd, but I ignore him, and we launch into our first song. I suddenly realize that there's, like, a thin wire-mesh-metal-grate thing. It's like we're in a cage or something. I kick at it to get Robbie's attention and he just nods at me all solemn and determined.

Why does he never pick up on signals that something's off or whatever? No wonder he doesn't have a girlfriend.

We play a couple of songs and launch into our favourite one, a barn-burner compared to the other tracks we have. If we were popular at all, we might want it as our first single or something. Still, the crowd isn't as engaged as I would like them to be. They just sit there, barely even looking at us.

"Fuck!" I yell into the microphone. "Fuck you all!" I scream, cutting the song in half and pounding on my keyboard. The samples trail off, the drums stop abruptly. "Fuckin' loser fucks!"

It had finally got to me. Robbie's sad determination and all that stupid shit. It had been months of tireless, challenging work, and these people didn't even care about the effort we made!

"Whadyousay?" some voice calls out. Some drunken jerk.

"I said you're all fuckin' losers!" I yell out. And for some reason, Robbie does a little "bu-dum-pssh" sound on his drums, like I'm telling a joke. It makes me smile and laugh.

The reason for the metal grating in front of us becomes readily apparent when the first bottle is thrown at us. It smashes in front of me, spraying tiny shards of glass and warm beer on my legs.

"What a waste," Sinjin says, shaking his head, but then he waggles his eyebrows. "Want me to lick it off for ya?"

"Get off the stage, ya cunt!" some guy yells. Another bottle whizzes into the grating, spraying us with beer and safer-than-regular-big-shards of glass.

"We should probably go," Sandra yells out.

"Go back to the kitchen and make me a sandwich, you bitch!" comes another voice. Cheers erupt from the crowd and more bottles are thrown.

"Yeah, yeah, okay," I say to Sandra. I look at Robbie. I thought he would be pissed because there's no way we're getting paid, but he's just smiling. One of those big genuine smiles that he used to have. It looks good, and I feel good because of it.

Suddenly, a chair is thrown against the screen, rattling it and cracking the chair to the ground in front of the stage.

"Can we go now?" Sinjin asks, kind of dead-pan. The king of the understatement. We pack up and leave.

* * *

Around the block from the bar we just played is a coffee-shop, and we hole up there for a bit. Sipping on iced coffee and regaling each other with stories of the night and how bad the gig was, has sort of sets our souls on fire. Despite the bad gigs, and all the trouble we've been having with getting nowhere and playing hellholes, we at least have a good story now. We all revel in it. The two bandmates and the two roadies are a little bit cooler, a little bit more hipper tonight. We don't know anybody else who's had bottles thrown at them.

Suddenly, a man comes up to us, cutting our conversation short. He's skinny, with a bright bald head and an unruly beard. He's wearing a bathrobe and has an intense look in his eye.

"Mind if I join you?" he asks. His voice has a gravitas and drama to it, like he's performing for a live studio audience.

"Go away, old man," I say with a roll of my eyes. He's clearly a crazy person, considering I've just realized he's barefoot in public.

"I'm not that old, and I would think that Counter Memories would like to hear what I have to say." Hearing our band's name perks us up a little bit.

"Yeah, okay," Robbie says with some apprehension. The man drags a chair to the table, having it squeak and grind across the floor the whole way, irritating everyone in the place. He seems oblivious to it, though, and sits down by straddling the back of the chair. Like when a guidance counsellor wanted to "rap with you".

"Erwin Sikowitz," the man says, introducing himself with a handshake to Robbie and the rest at the table. "Sikowitz is the name, and artist representation is my game." He pulls a business card from his robe and hands it to me. I look at it.

"Coconut Consulting, Artist Management Group LLC," I say out loud. It looks like the real deal.

"We're a small startup, and we're looking for acts to add to our roster," says Mr. Sikowitz. "Real acts with a truthful sound that will change the world."

He's saying word for word what's on the business card under the company name.

"You're an agent?" I asked.

"Kind of," he replies.

"You think we can change the world?" Robbie pipes up, a little squeak in his voice. What a gee-dee dork. The man just kind of shrugs.

"I think you have the potential to be big."

"Yeah, right, whatever Mr. Siko-whatever," I say dismissively. From somewhere else in his robe, Mr. Sikowitz produces a coconut. He takes a straw out of the dispenser at our table, and jams it in with super-human force.

"Just Sikowitz."

"Sikowitz, then," Robbie says. He glares at me, and that's my cue to be a little better behaved.

"Anyways, I think your act would be perfect for me to manage. You make the great music. I book the gigs. I manage the money. I help get the word out. For 10% of the cut, of course." He smiles and does a little jazz-hand thing.

"You think they're good enough for that kind of thing?" Sinjin asks.

"You think we're not?" I snap at the red-haired dork.

"We're not the Young Runaways," Robbie throws out there, and Sandra squeals because she's still oh-so-in-love with them.

"Ahhh, yes, the Young Runaways," Sikowitz says. "Great band."

"Yeah, we're not them, though, so, whatever," I say, crossing my arms in front of my chest and looking away.

"We...uh...opened for them," Robbie says. Sikowitz perks up.

"Really?"

"Well, not rea..." I start, but Sandra and Robbie kick my shin under the table. I grimace and cough.

"That's how we got our start," Robbie says. "Jade and I opened for them right before they started getting played on the radio."

Sikowitz looks more than impressed.

"Maybe I was right about you guys," he says. "If you're good enough for the Young Runaways, you might just make it yet."

"Wait!" I call out, to dirty looks from everyone in our group. "How'd you hear about us, anyway? We're not, like, anybody famous or whatever."

"I just saw that great little gig next door," Sikowitz says like it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"Great?" Robbie asks, incredulous. Siko-whatever takes a long hard sip from his coconut straw contraption.

"Shit yeah. It was gutsy. That song you cut off before the trouble...damn, it was great. You guys have moxie and grit and all that good stuff. I liked what I heard. You've got potential, for sure. Just, you know, sign up with me and my company and that'll be that. I'll be your manager. Erwin Sikowitz, manager to Counter Memories."

He holds out a hand for a handshake. I share a glance with Robbie. The guy may be weird or whatever, but he's the only one who's approached us about anything. And he seems genuinely enthusiastic. It's like telepathy between us, and we nod at one-another, agreeing with each other instinctively.

"Deal," we all say, and shake his hand.

"Great!" he says. "Just one change, though."

I roll my eyes and sigh out.

"What?" I ask. More sips from the coconut before he drops the news.

"You guys need to beef up your sound. You need a damn bassist. Make the two-piece a three-piece, and you'll be on your way."


	8. Chapter 8

The days pass, as they're known to do. Robbie and I meet with this Sikowitz guy every now and then. He seems like a hands-off kind of manager, sort of, and that's nice. And when he does pop up, it's usually for just the right amount of time. Everything about that is appreciated.

"You guys sound like a coffee-shop act," he tells us one day, as I clean the floors of the cafe I work at, and Robbie-the-dorkus drinks free coffee with him, not offering to help at all. "Seriously, seriously coffee shop," he re-iterates.

Robbie looks offended, but I can't really be bothered to care.

"Plus," Sikowitz intones between sips of Coconut-Sleepy-Time Organic Tea, "You still haven't found a bassist."

It was true. We'd been hunting the city for bassists. We put up ads on Craigslist and put up some posters - which depleted our band fund on a level I hadn't ever guessed it could. But there was nothing. The only people who ever responded were in their 50s and wanting to be in a metal group. To get that lost mojo back and reclaim some glory they lost after grunge disappeared and they started their blue-collar jobs.

It was incredibly depressing.

"We're trying," I complain as I throw some old muffins into the garbage. I could have taken them home to eat, but damn, I forgot, and there they are, all gross in the garbage.

"Not hard enough."

"You have to be...freaking...fudging kidding me," says Robbie. "We've nearly killed ourselves."

Which was true. My fingers hurt from constant playing. I haven't been to the movies or done anything fun. Just band things. It almost feels like a second job. Sikowitz just nods, his fingers pressed against his mouth.

"Good music...nay! Great music! It should completely kill whoever makes it," he says.

"Whatever," I retort with an eye roll.

"I'm serious. Music is passion and soul and should grind you down until there is nothing left. Not just music. Art! Writing! Acting! Everything! All great bands make it because they're passionate about what they do. They're crazy with passion!"

"Whatever," I say again. Which just makes him make a sour-lemon face.

"Fine, we'll look harder," says Robbie, who bites into a gluten-free, organic cinnamon bun. "But it's no use."

"It'll stop you guys from being so coffee-shop and add that extra umph and kick and all the good things," says Sikowitz. Robbie looks offended again.

"What do mean by that?" he asks.

"You're perfectly fine for an artsy-fartsy coffee shop where you work for tips and no one pays any attention to you anyways and where you're non-offensive."

"Great," I drawl.

"But with that extra kick...a little jostle in sound...you guys will destroy the world!" Sikowitz exclaims, slapping his hand down on the table hard enough to clatter the plates.

My phone buzzes, and it's a text from Sinjin, who unfortunately has my phone number now. Every day I worry that he might send a picture of his dick or his ginger pubes or whatever, but it hasn't happened yet.

I look at the screen. _Myt have bassist 4 u. Joblo's on 33rd, 2nite 11._

"Sinjin has a lead on a bassist or whatever," I tell the two and hold up my phone. "Tonight at some place called Joblo's."

"Oh god, seriously?" Sikowitz says with a large twinge of worry.

"What?" Robbie asks.

"That place is rough as hell. I mean, like...crazy-rough."

"Sounds fun," I say. "We're going."

"But..." Robbie starts. I give him the death glare and he trails off. I smile and keep cleaning up as the other two move on to conversation topics such as which soundtrack was better: Moulin Rouge or Romeo and Juliet?

It's so domestic and normal-feeling these days and this sort of regular occurrence makes me content in a tiny, unknowable way. And I hate not knowing why it makes me happy.

* * *

Sikowitz took the subway with us and walked with us to Joblo's before departing for a date or something. Sinjin is waiting patiently at the end of a line that's waiting to get in, leaning against the wall and texting, all trying to be cool which he totally isn't. Robbie does the same pose and it doesn't really help things.

"You guys are dorks," I say, apropos of nothing. Robbie rolls his eyes, but Sinjin keeps on texting, not really looking up or acknowledging anything other than his tiny little screen. "Who you texting there?"

"My girlfriend," Sinjin tells me.

"You have a girlfriend?" I ask, actually stunned.

"Yeah."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"How come we've never met her?" I ask.

"We have," Robbie says, rolling his eyes.

"Really? What? When? Who?" I ask, almost at a stutter. "Is it serious?"

"Really serious," replies Sinjin. "Here, check this out."

He holds up the phone, and under the name heading of MySexayBabe is a text saying _thinkin of u babe cant wait 2 get home soon_ and there's a picture. A closeup of two fingers going into...

"Oh, gross!" I exclaim, cringing away from his phone. He shows Robbie, who nods his head in appreciation.

"Nice," is all he says. It irks me and I give him the biggest deathstare ever, for no real reason other than the fact that he's such a _boy._

The line starts moving, and after paying our two dollar cover, we go down the stairs into Joblo's.

* * *

I'm taken aback. I thought we had played shows in some horrible, shitty, god-awful hellholes, but apparently there are worse places in the city. It was like we were scratching the surface of horrible places.

"It smells like wet dog butt in here," Robbie says to me, as Sinjin comes back with some beers for us. They didn't even have a bouncer, so there was no need for fake IDs or fearful moments or anything.

We're standing near the back of the basement club. It's all cement pillars and graffiti, and the bar is a guy in a closet, giving out red cups of warm beer and whisky. It's pretty jam packed, and the stage is about the size of a dinner table.

"So who's this bassist you've tracked down?" Robbie asks Sinjin.

"She's in the band that's playing tonight," he replies. "The Exploding Kunts."

"Cunts?!" Robbie asks, aghast.

"Yeah. But with, like, a K."

"And?" I interject, breaking up the monotony of an already-boring conversation.

"Well, the Kunts are breaking up so their singer can go into rehab, so I figured that they'd be looking for jobs. Their bassist is pretty awesome. Thought if you guys liked her, you could snatch her up before some other jerks do."

"Perfect," I say.

"Rehab?!" Robbie says with his aghast tone.

"Meth," says Sinjin, matter-of-factly. "But I don't think the bassist does anything. I think."

The lights go down and the crowd cheers as a wall of feedback sprays out from the speakers. The band takes the stage. Skinny women in black ripped everything and dirty denim. Pale with greasy black hair and track-marks up and down their arms. And then the bassist.

Red hair and a pink poofy dress and a deep tan and a jailbait kind of look. She sticks out like a sore thumb.

"Whoa," I hear Robbie say over the sound of the feedback. He looks starstruck at how clean and beautiful she is. I roll my eyes.

"Get the fuck up and start some shit you motherfuckers!" screams the singer. And suddenly the whole place turns into a moshpit as the throbbing, grinding punk rock starts up. My beer gets spilt, Robbie gets sucked into the crowd, and Sinjin whines when he drops his phone against the ground, getting it stomped on.

I spend the rest of the show alternating between staying alive in the mass of people and focusing on the chug-chug-chugging of the bassist as she hops around and smiles and giggles on stage.

* * *

It's after the show, and we're waiting outside the club for the bassist. Robbie has a black eye from someone kicking him in the face. I have bruises all up and down my arm, and Sinjin hasn't been seen since the fifth or sixth song. We smell like sweat and we look tired and shitty and grumpy.

"Oww..." Robbie says, trailing off. He rubs at his head and slides down against the wall of the club until he's sitting down on the ground. He looks pathetic, but not in that funny way I always tell him he looks like. It's kind of sad. I go and sit next to him.

"This band stuff is hard, huh?" I ask. We watch cars drive by on the street. The occasional taxi.

"Yeah." There's silence for a while. "Is it worth it?"

I sigh.

"I don't know," is all I say.

"Me neither. I mean...we have a manager or whatever now...but...I mean..." he trails off for a bit. More sounds of the city fill the space. For some reason I feel calm. I can smell Robbie's sweat and feel heat radiating off his skin. I wonder if it's the same from me-to-him.

"We'll get there," I tell him. "We'll just...if every band quit because they were kicked in the head at some point...we wouldn't have any bands."

He laughs at that. A small, sweet smile. It looks good on him.

"Yeah, maybe. But we really can't play in places like this anymore," he says. "I'm thinking, like, stadium tour. Wembley, Air Canada Centre...forty thousand people every night."

We both laugh.

"We'll see, right? Anything's possible," I say. We laugh again, and for some reason, just because I was feeling like it - again, for some stupid reason - I put my head on his shoulder. Leaning on it because I'm tired and sore.

Suddenly, Sinjin shows up in front of us with the redheaded bassist. She's tiny and smiling and looking like an adorable little doll or something. Robbie and I stand up, saying hello.

"Hi hi!" she exclaims with a little wave. "I'm Cat!"

"Hi," Robbie says. He very obviously thinks she's attractive. "You're a bassist?"

"Yup! Sinjin here tells me you're looking for one!"

"Do you just play punk music?" I ask. I suddenly feel kind of sceptical of the whole thing.

"Nope!"

"Works for me," Sinjin says with a little more enthusiasm than necessary. I give him the "you already have a girlfriend" glare.

"Well, we'll audition tomorrow," I say. "See if you can make it."

We exchange information, and after some awkward goodbyes we start walking away. But Cat somehow follows us.

"Are you okay?" Robbie asks.

"I like your hair," she tells me.

"Oh...thanks." I don't know how to respond. We all stand around awkwardly. She just looks at us, smiling wide, her hands clasped in front of her.

"What are we doing?" Cat asks.

"Umm...standing here?" Sinjin says.

"No, I meant tonight."

"Uh..." Robbie trails off.

"We didn't have any, um, real plans," I say.

"Well, we should hang out," says Cat. She seems more than a little sincere.

"Really?" I ask. "We just met."

"Yeah...but you seem nice. Nicer than my last band."

"Oh, well..." I start, looking for any excuse to end this awkwardness in a nice-as-possible way.

"My last band were all friends with my brother!" Cat starts. "My brother would sell them this powder stuff and they'd always say they were cooking but it was never anything you could really eat or anything."

Robbie looks just like how I think I look at this moment. Wide-eyed and stunned.

"Huh," I state. "Well...uh...are you hungry?"

"Yep!" Cat says. More silence for a moment.

"I could eat," Robbie says.

"I guess we're eating then," I say. And we walk off into the night in search of somewhere that's open this late, a stray Cat following us.


	9. Chapter 9

We audition Cat, and she passes with flying colours. For a girl who is the least rock-and-roll person I know - running away from butterflies flying close to her ear and constantly wearing those stupid puffy dresses - she knows how to rock out and really knows how to play the bass. Her brother - who I think may have killed a horse in cold blood - seems way more rock and roll than her, but he's never around. So we get Cat's own brand of bass and second-hand stories of her brother's antics.

Our new hire lights a brand-new fire under our asses, and we end up writing more songs than what we know to do with. Ones that are more intricate, heavy, deeper. With Cat now working the low-end with her bass, Sinjin is able to add new layers to the songs with his sampler. We quickly become more complex, and less "coffee-shop" as Sikowitz calls it.

"Yay!" Cat says after hearing this sort-of praise. High-fiving Robbie, he grins back at her and does a chin-rest thing I've learned is his "move" or something. He's definitely got the hots for her, which might destroy the band or is just stupid, I don't know.

"No one will have to put money into an open guitar case at the end of the night!" Robbie says to another one of Cat's exclamations.

Ugh. Money, money, money. Money is always a problem these days. I hate barely scraping by, and Robbie-slash-Sikowitz won't let me dip into the band fund to help me out.

"Do it once, and you'll just do it again and again," Robbie tells me. I get annoyed because it's super-presumptuous, but it's right. "Hell," he adds on, "I'd do the same thing." And he does his little smile thing and I'm not as annoyed as I was before.

I take on extra hours at the cafe, even doing some early morning stuff with the bakers. Robbie loosens the slack on practise and Sikowitz nods his head in understanding when I tell him about rent and passes and all that other stuff. But that doesn't mean things are still easy. I'm still tired, still exhausted.

Things go a little better for Robbie. He gets a full time DJ gig and is able to quit his job at the bodega he worked at. To top it all off, he gets the DJ gig at a strip club.

"It's a residency," he tells me. "I'm the resident DJ."

"Whatever," I say, rolling my eyes. "How did you even get it? You're not old enough to be in a strip club in the first place."

When I say this his eyes go wide and he puts his finger to his lips, letting out a long, exaggerated, paranoid "sssshhhhhhhh". He nervously glances around.

"God, don't tell anyone. I got it with my Sikowitz ID."

Sikowitz got us fake IDs. His friend or whatever works for the DMV and at one point we were able to sneak in late at night and get them printed up. It was all very illegal and Robbie hemmed-and-hawed over it but was finally convinced in the end. It felt like Ocean's Eleven going in, but in reality it really wasn't all that exciting. Even if Sinjin wore a black spy turtleneck.

"Now you have the realest fake IDs ever," said Sikowitz. "You can get into bars to see shows, get into bars to _play _shows, and you won't be hassled by The Man."

* * *

"I still can't believe you work at strip club," I tell Robbie, as we sit in his apartment after a long rehearsal and writing session. It's humid and we've all kind of just given up because of the heat. I think that it might be the first super-hot day of the year.

"Well, believe it," he tells me. "Hey, so, like, if you guys come tomorrow I can get you free drinks."

"Ew, I don't have to do anything or dance or whatever, do I?" I ask him.

"Ugh, God no. If people see you around it might drum up business. Or so says the boss. He asked me to bring people, try and make it more popular than it is." Robbie worked the late morning, early afternoon shift. It wasn't exactly the popular time. And the dancers weren't exactly lookers either, according to him.

"My brother used to date a stripper," Cat pipes up. "She had seven real fingers, and three wooden ones. She said she lost them in a lawnmower."

Robbie groans.

"Awesome," I say with reverence. I was a goth in high school. I guess it comes out every now and then. "But, yeah, I'm down for free drinks tomorrow. I finally, actually, totally, completely have a day off tomorrow, finally. You in, Cat?" She just nods.

"What about Sinjin?" she asks me.

"What about him?" is my annoyed reply.

"Sinjin's in the band, right?"

"Nope."

"Well..." Robbie trails off. I glare at him. He's got that reticent look in his eyes. "He, kinda-sorta-is."

"You're kidding me," I tell Robbie. He shrugs.

"If it wasn't for him, you wouldn't have found me!" Cat exclaims.

"And we wouldn't be getting any cool or different sounds," Robbie adds on. Ugh.

"Fine, whatever," I say. "Just, you know, don't let it get to his head. Seriously, since he's gotten with his girlfriend or whatever that guy has just been non-stop with the sass."

"She's sassy herself," Robbie says. "I think she's rubbing off on him."

"Sinjin says she rubs him off all the time!" Cat says. Robbie and I look at her, aghast. But she just does her innocent smile-look-thing and I know she doesn't know what she's saying. I bury my head in my hands.

"This life I lead," I say to no-one.

* * *

The strip club is called Big Buns, and it's not really a classy joint. It's dark and smells like varnish. There's one small stage to our right, and blue-red lights flicker and flash and swirl around. A sad, resentful air filters through the place. Robbie's DJ booth is above the stage, and you can't really see him.

For some reason, Sinjin is wearing sunglasses and his black turtleneck again, sipping a mojito or whatever and looking like such a dork I could punch his face.

"You look like an asshole," I tell him. "It's dark as hell in here. Take off the sunglasses, or I'll knock you out!"

"No! If my lady finds out I'm in a place like this, she'll do way worse than whatever you've got going on."

"Sounds like such a catch," I deadpan before turning my attention to Robbie, who plays some generic techno. A girl in a corset dances on stage to the beat in a lazy, tired way. A large leg scars glow under the light and I roll my eyes.

"Hi hi!" Cat says, and I turn my attention to the seat next to me as Sikowitz plops down looking pre-occupied and apprehensive.

"What's up with you?" I ask.

"There was a woman at the bar with wooden fingers, it was vaguely disconcerting," he replies and Cat gasps, arching to get a look at her. In his hand is a pina colada inside a coconut shell, and he takes a long sip of it. "But that's neither here nor there."

"Her fingers aren't here or there, either," I say. Cat says I'm gross and Sinjin laughs without looking away from his phone, texting his lady or whatever.

"Well, I have some news," Sikowitz says after another long sip. "Some good news."

"About time," I tell him.

"Don't be a gank."

"I don't really know what that means." He just gets exasperated.

"Do you want to know the news or not?!"

"I do! I do!" Cat exclaims, raising her hand like a student in class.

"Well..." Sikowitz stops for effect. "I got you guys a little mini-tour."

"A...tour?" I echo, kind of stunned.

"A _little mini _tour," Sikowitz says with a smile. "One week, four shows. All in New York state."

"Wow...I mean...wow."

"Yippee!" Cat exclaims with a clap of her hands. I suddenly feel crestfallen.

"Shit, I gotta check with work and everything." Sikowitz waves it away.

"They'll be cool."

"I don't know about that," Sinjin pipes up, putting his phone away. "People are known to suck."

"Shut up dork, you don't even have a job," I spit out.

"Your argument makes no sense."

"Doesn't need to when it's with you!"

"Children, please!" Sikowitz pleads. "We'll get all of this sorted." A stripper in pink underwear walks by, distracting him for a moment before returning his gaze back to us. "You'll get going. Things are on their way. I can totally feel it."

I don't tell him that I'm not that sure. I just look at Robbie, and wonder what his reaction to the news might be. He just got a job. Will they let him leave? Is this a bad idea? What do I need to pack if I go? What will Sandra say?

So many questions flood my mind and I have to shake my head to empty them out of my brain.

* * *

**A/N - I know this is a slow-burning story, but that's how I like to write them. I don't want things to just happen out of nowhere and be super easy for the characters. Realism for the cost of speed. Don't worry, we're going places, and things are kicking up a notch.**

**A/N Pt. 2 - Thank you for the continued support, reviews, etc. It feels good!**


	10. Chapter 10

With a month left before our mini-tour, Counter Memories puts itself into overdrive. It's work, work, work. Part-time jobs saving money, a gig here or there, and writing-writing-writing new tunes. I sleep long and well, exhausted and slightly stressed at everything. Every night, I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, falling into oblivion and waking up for another long day. Luckily, I get the week off to tour, as does Robbie from his strip-club place, and Cat from her babysitting business.

Unfortunately, the last day of the tour is one that I'm not looking forward to. We're going to be playing a club in Utica, which is where I used to live, and where my parents currently live. And silly me, I let them know. And they want to see my band, and let us sleep overnight. And Sikowitz loved the idea. And I want to put a bullet in my head.

"We won't have to pay for a hotel! Or sleep in the van!" he says with a clap of his hands and a big wide smile. I just sigh and bear it and go along with it.

Sandra raised a stink about me leaving for a week, and rightly so.

"I'll be stuck at the bakery by myself!" she said.

"You can be my official assistant!" Sikowitz had interjected.

"You don't need an assistant," I had said, thinking about all of us crammed into the van Sikowitz had decided to rent for the trip. He ignored me and pulled some strings to get her to come along. So it would be bubbly Cat and bubbly Sandra together in a van for long periods of a time. When it was all figured out, my migraine started immediately.

"As long as you assist with setup too," Robbie had told her, and she had agreed.

"I'm your roadie! Now and forever!" she exclaimed and bounced over to whatever she was doing.

"Do we really, really, really have to stay with my parents?" I asked for the billionth time, and of course, it fell on deaf ears.

* * *

Seven A.M. Seven. Fucking. Eh-Em. That's the time we're all ready by to get out of New York and head upstate for our little mini-tour. We stand outside the rusted, silver Toyota that'll be our transport for the next little while.

"It looks like a fat version of the Back to the Future car," Robbie says.

"A shittier and broken fat version of the Back to the Future car," I add on.

"My brother had a van like this once. It didn't have any windows on the side and his best friend spray-painted 'Free Candy' on the side." Cat said that, of course.

Sandra shows up, looking bright and cheerful because that's who she is. But she also brings large-large-large cups of coffee and I grab mine out of the cardboard tray before she can hand them out.

"Ready to go?" she asks.

"Sikowitz isn't here," Sinjin says. "He said he'd be back."

And right on time, Sikowitz rounds the corner in his old Honda car. Only there's a woman in the passenger seat, and she looks like an old school hippy. He screeches the car to a halt beside us, basically double-parking like an asshole New Yorker, and gets out. A purple, out-of-fashion duffel bag is slung over his shoulder.

Weed smoke pours out of the car and Sikowitz looks like he doesn't really know where he is. The woman - blonde and wearing a stained ankle length dress - shifts into the driver's seat, slams the door, and peels out. She looked furious.

"You smell like an outdoor festival," I tell him, curling my nose up in agitation.

"That your girlfriend?" Robbie asks.

"_Was _my girlfriend. I told her I'd be spending a week with you guys and she got super-pissed," he replies. He heads over to the van and opens the back, piling the bag on top of our equipment and our own bags.

"That seems kind of petty," Sandra says. He shrugs and points to me, Cat, and Sandra.

"She didn't like the looks of you," he says. Cat gasps, offended.

"I think she means that you were too pretty," Robbie says in a pathetic way to placate her.

"That's about the gist of it," Sikowitz confirms. He jazz-hands. "Now! Who's ready for their first tour?!"

Cat claps and hops, as does Sandra. The tired people just give out a sullen "whoo" and that's it. Sikowitz gets into the driver's seat and slams the door as we all pile in. It's an old van, so there's no seats in the back, per se. Just trunks and an office chair that's been drilled into the floor.

Sinjin and the girls get in the back, Robbie takes first shift as navigator in the passenger seat. It smells like a musty library in the back.

"You _rented_ this?" I ask Sikowitz.

"From some guy, yeah."

"Stop being such a Negative Nancy," Sandra tells me. "This is what touring's supposed to be like!"

"Yeah! Negative Nancy!" Robbie echoes with a big annoying smile and exaggeration that is only meant to make me want to kill him.

I just sip my coffee, slurping as loud as possible. Sikowitz revs the engine and the van sputters and dies. He tries again, straining the ignition.

"Plus..." Robbie starts, digging into his jacket pocket, pulling out a CD case. "I have this!"

"OH MY GOD!" Sandra squeals, yanking it out of Robbie's hand and coveting the case like it's the cure for every disease ever.

"What is it?" Cat asks with wide eyes as we lean over to look.

It's the Young Runaways, and it's their CD. Professionally made and wrapped in cellophane and all of that.

Titled "Fell Apart Right At The End", the whole group stands on the middle of a Los Angeles street at sunset. They all stand in different positions, brooding and not looking at the camera. Tori the singer at the front, very prominent and stupidly cool and beautiful. The drummer with the great hair looking sexy and cool and all that great stuff.

"There's your girlfriend," Robbie says to Sinjin, pointing to the curvy bassist.

"Wait, what?" Sandra says.

"Yeah, I'm dating her," Sinjin says, quite proud of himself. "Trina, how I miss you!" He lovingly, longingly rubs her picture with the palm of his hand, like he's petting a dog.

"Those shorts are insane," I say. "Is that all she wears?"

Sikowitz tries the engine again. It chugs to life and then dies. Robbie rolls his eyes at him.

"Come on! Stupid van!" Sikowitz yells.

"So much for our tour," I say. Sikowitz guns the engine one more time and the van sputters to life, chugging and popping.

"Ha! Suck it!" he yells in victory, and he presses the gas pedal and we pull out of the street, on for our first tour.

* * *

Endless roads and fast food and small talk and the Young Runaways on repeat. It's really not the bad, except for Sikowtiz' driving, which is erratic. Every now and then, we all spill out of our shitty, broken seats and tumble to the floor. Cat just giggles it away until she gets her dress covered in ketchup.

We cross state lines and go into Pennsylvania, taking the two hour ride to Scranton. Home of the TV show "The Office", which Robbie geeks over about. Unfortunately, the town is small and quiet and not really all the interesting when it comes to anything other than the TV show. Sikowitz sets us up in a motel near the main street, and we can't think of anything to do until our soundcheck later in the day. It's just a city, with nothing to see.

"Tours are boring," I say to Sandra as Sinjin flicks past the TV channels. We're all crammed into one room - something I wholeheartedly objected to despite the money implications - and it's hot and there's no beer for fun, and there's nothing to really do. Sikowitz said he knew some people in town and was out visiting him, and despite how shady it seems, I regret going with him.

"Negative Nancy," Robbie mumbles. "Can't you just enjoy yourself?" He's very obviously pissed, for no fucking reason!

"Excuse me?" I ask, suddenly offended and bitter.

"Can't you just enjoy yourself?" he repeats, more severe than before.

"When did you get a spine?" I ask.

"Answer my question first," he shoots back.

"I can't get into this. Sharing a room with everyone, nothing to do!"

"What did you expect? Five-star service? International venues? Seriously, what is your problem?" It's more angry than I've ever seen him before, more annoyed.

"Don't look at me!" I shout. "You were the one all sad and shit before we had Sikowitz."

"But I kept my mouth shut!"

"You guys seem to be forgetting that there are other people in the room," Sinjin interjects but I just deathstare him.

"I guess I'm just negative then! It's who I am! Jade West, Pissed Off Bitch!" I yell.

"This is escalated really quickly," Sandra states. "We should cool off and take a step back."

"Whatever," I say. I get up and leave the room, grabbing my purse and slamming the door. Annoyed and it's only the first day. We haven't even played yet. Great. Just fucking great.


	11. Chapter 11

I immediately regret stomping away from the room, and through the halls. Deep down, I know I shouldn't be a gank, but something irks me. It irks all the time, reaching deep down and twisting my insides.

And I snap. And I break. And I feel like I want to scream and cry but no scream and no tears ever come. Just a weight on my chest that transfers into annoyance and anger and...that's all I can really say about anything involving anything. Because I just know the feeling and what it does. I don't know the why. The why is far away and cloudy.

Pride and hubris and whatever else keeps me from running back into the room and telling anyone that yes, I know I can be a bitch, I'm just a little stressed out, and I'm sorry, and I'll work harder at it.

I'm outside the motel, in the pool area at the back. With the slight breeze, leaves begin to fall from the trees, landing and floating in the empty pool. They leave ripples and if I was any smarter or happier, I might be able to come up with something more philosophical. I just stare and feel numb.

But then there's a presence coming up from behind me, heavy feet on concrete. It's Robbie, and he sits in the chair next to mine. He doesn't look at me, staring at the pool too. Just silence, which is okay. I still feel myself bristling at his him being around.

"What's going on?" he asks, almost a whisper. I makes me feel worse and more vulnerable than if he had decided to throw severity in my direction. My adrenaline has died down and now I just felt like a whiny bitch.

"I...don't know."

"Liar." There's silence, and we watch the pool some more, watch the leaves in the trees. I feel the wind lift my hair up and splay it around my face. I'm getting a little cooler, and I wrap my arms around myself.

"I'm...just...sorry, okay?" I look at him and frown a little bit. "I'm sorry I treat you like a piece of shit a lot of the time. It's not...right. At all."

In saying it, I realize that I'm telling the truth. That I'm most definitely figuring this out as I go along.

"You have to have a reason, though," he says. He doesn't accept my apology or anything. He just digs into it. Little bastard. Or maybe this is just his dumb boy way of being nice.

"Don't poke and prod," I lecture. "I'm sorry, okay? Can we leave it at that?"

"Not really."

"God, you're so matter of fact and dorky!" I tell him, rolling my eyes and grimacing. He smiles at me. Silence floats by. Leaves rustle in the trees. A car goes by in the distance, blasting its stereo. The Young Runaways float in the air and fade away. The song Sandra said was to be their next single: "Tearaway Play".

"I'm just..." he starts but trails off again. "I'm just trying to be a good friend, I guess."

"You are a good friend," I re-assure him. And if to put an a little exclamation point on to it, he gives me his hoodie, and I wrap it around my chilled arms as a stronger breeze comes. "Thanks."

"Winter is coming," he says with all the gravitas he can afford with a huge smile on his face.

"Again with that reference!" I groan. He'd been talking about it since the weather had started to cool.

Time passes quietly. I don't know for how long. But I like it. I like being with him, alone and not talking.

"We have to stick together," Robbie says, totally putting on his super-serious voice. "That's all there is to it."

"You make it sound bigger than it actually is." There's even more silence, almost impenetrable. "And that's the problem. Things keep happening but it's not like there's any feeling attached to it, or anything. It's just..." I go on. "It's this thing where, yeah, I'm supposed to be excited but there's no excitement there. We're on tour! But...it happens...and that's it. Nothing more. Always less."

More cars drive by.

"Do you want to quit?" he asks, back in whisper mode. I take time to mull it over.

"No. Not really. I..." I start but I feel I'm letting too much in. Ah well, screw it. If I'm going to open up to anyone, it might as well be him. "I like playing with you guys, and you're all pretty awesome, when you're not being terrible." He laughs at that. But then I drop my little bomb.

"I've always figured that I was...you know...special. That day I quit acting and visited you at the bodega, I was kind of giving up. I knew I was special, but I'm just...tired. A lot. And every day I feel like I'm not special at all. It's just this thing that I have to constantly remind myself of. Every moment of every day or I just want to lay in bed and stare at the wall. And being in some shitty motel in some town...I don't feel special. Or different. But most importantly, I don't feel _good._"

"But, you are special," he says, again barely above a whisper. He looks me in the eye. "I think you're really special."

"Uh..." I start, because there's suddenly a scared and confused and jumbled amount of emotions flooding up in my chest, and I can feel my heart beat a little faster and my throat tighten and my face get red. For a million reasons I can't think of right away.

"And Cat thinks you're special, and so does Sikowitz, too. We all do!" he says with a big, goofy smile on his face. He stands up, and holds out his hand. I take it and he pulls me up, letting go. "We're here, doing what we're loving, and we'll start having fun, and the world will see how special you actually are."

"Whatever, dorkus-malorkus."

"You ready to rock this country now?" he asks, his grin is even bigger. "Or at least the most northwestern part of it?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever forever," is all I say, and he knows that things are okay now.

* * *

Our gig is in a small nightclub at the edge of the downtown. It holds about a hundred people, and it's a pretty full place.

"There must be nothing to do in this town," Sinjin comments with some sage wisdom that's completely unbecoming of him. But the crowd is nice enough and we have actual lights, and an actual soundcheck, and I think we do pretty good. But that's about it. No more, no less. We pack up and cram into the van, late at night after our gig, and we take off into the darkness.

Sikowitz pops a couple of those pills that truckers take to stay up late all night while driving, and both Sinjin and Cat are beginning to nod off into dreamland. Robbie silently looks out the window, thinking about God-knows-what. It smells like sweat, and we'll be showering at a truck stop in the morning.

As I start to fall asleep, I keep telling myself that I've chosen this. That I have friends that I'm willing to do this for. That, yes, getting on stage and performing, even to 20 people, is still something I want to do.

I've chosen this, and I'll see it out to the end.

* * *

**A/N - I know that I haven't been updating and this story is moving at a snail's pace. I plan to rectify that in the coming little while. I just had severe, severe writer's block. A lot of things in this story are about to hit, rocking the world of these characters. I thank you, dear reader, for sticking through it this far.**


	12. Chapter 12

We play our shows, shuttling between venues and motels until it all becomes a little bit of a blur. Even though it's only a week, the tour definitely has a "hurry up and get a move on" feel of what I assume a major tour would be like. We go to a motel, we drive, we play a show, and on and on.

Then Sikowitz drops a bomb on us as we drive a loop back around from Rochester into Elmira, through empty roads and farmer's fields to where my parents are probably waiting with a potroast. He gives us his philosophy and his plans and the rules to the game he's playing as we all eat drive-thru kebabs. It smells like garlic and middle-eastern meats and is an improvement to the smell the van's been gaining since we all started stinking it up last week.

"This has been boot camp," he tells us. "Touring boot camp. Not really a real tour or anything."

"Imagination, yay!" Cat exclaims. "Am I dreaming?"

"No, this actually happened," Sinjin says.

"What's the deal?" Robbie asks, mouth full of lettuce and chicken and whatever.

"We did this - I planned this - to see if you guys could handle the touring lifestyle that a band requires," he says, smirking at his own genius and cutting across lanes in front of a honking Mustang convertible.

Brief flashes to my mini-meltdown and reluctance back on our very first day occur, and I'm ashamed at my silliness, and my failure of this test.

"Why do you think...?" Sikowitz starts, "You're touring and you barely have any presence of any kind? No website, no buzz, no anything..."

"Um," Cat starts, but she doesn't finish her thought.

"Why don't you have any CDs or merchandise to sell?"

"Because we don't have any!" Cat exclaims. "Am I passing?" I just shake my head and tell her to shush.

"Why have the gigs ranged from small to things that are basically 'battle of the bands' competitions?"

"Ugh," I say, remembering Williamsport where the drummer of the band playing after us tried to beat up Robbie after we won or whatever. There was a lot of tussling backstage, but other than some bruises, Robbie held his own despite being a dork of the highest order.

"I wanted to see if you've got the chops to keep going, to see if you're one step closer to special," Sikowitz says. Robbie tries to catch my eye, but I ignore him and take some of Sinjin's fries from his brown paper bag.

"So?" Sandra asks as Sinjin throws me an annoyed look, "Do they have what it takes?"

Sikowitz just shrugs.

"I heard about the little blowup at the start from Cat," he says, and she shrinks away from my deathglare. "But tonight's show is the true test."

Sikowitz smiles in an evil, evil, evil way.

"I don't like the looks of that," I say to no one in particular. Sikowitz starts laughing, a deep, satisfied rumble.

"So, hey," Robbie starts. "When do we get a real tour?" Sikowitz laughs again.

"When you pass all your tests!" he exclaims, as he swerves across more lanes. I see Robbie's knuckles are white from gripping his seat and horns honk behind us.

* * *

Sikowitz, you bastard. I realized why you saved this for last, you god-damn asshole motherfucking sack of shit garbage eater.

The show that we're playing in my hometown is at the bar across from the community college. Which means that everyone I went to high-school with, and who didn't leave town as soon as possible, would be here.

Because community college has been in session for about a month, and it's Friday, and people are looking to party and an out-of-town band is here and they are expecting greatness. So, basically, all the football jocks and their white-trash girlfriends that I both avoided and belittled in high school are waiting for us to take the small stage. To entertain them. Fantastic. Sandra is out there, mingling, and I don't like it one bit. What if she meets some dickhead meatjock from my high school and they fall in love and all that garbage?

I explain my worries to Robbie while we wait backstage for our time to go on, in a tiny room with some couches and coffee tables and beer and sandwiches. Rather than shrugging his shoulders and calling me a loser - which is what I expect and secretly want because I know my thoughts are dumb sometimes - he decides to look all concerned and everything. I don't know if I've told you this, but this kid is a dork. Dorky dorky dork dork.

"You want to call it off?" he whisper-asks as Cat walks by, humming on her way to the bathroom.

"Are you crazy?" I whisper-ask back. "We'll fail our test, Sikowitz'll probably drop us, and we'll be back to square one."

"So what do you want to do?"

"I don't know."

"Just picture them all naked," Sinjin calls out from the couch, not looking from his phone. Eavesdropping little butt-mouth.

"Yeah, that's fucking stupid," I tell him.

"Your face is stupid," he shoots back.

"Listen," Robbie says, interrupting. "Just...you know...give 'em a really good show. That's it. Wow their pants off, make them actually not care that it's you."

Cat comes back from the bathroom, looking scared.

"Don't use the bathroom," she says. "It's...terrible."

"Hey guys!" Robbie exclaims to the room, clapping his hands together like Sikowitz does. "Let's put on the greatest show ever tonight, okay?!"

"Kay kay!" Cat exclaims with her trademark wide eyes, like what Robbie's just said is the coolest most important thing ever.

"Yeah, sure, whatever," Sinjin says with his face pointed into this phone. King Dork of Counter Memories looks at me, grinning.

"Good enough?" he asks. I roll my eyes at him and cross my arms in finality...but deep down, somewhere in the shadow of my heart, I'm like...yeah, it really is good enough.

* * *

We take the stage and there are some light cheers from the bar crowd. The place is packed and despite the lights in my eyes, I already recognize a couple of people from my school in there. Drinking illegally, of course, but they're there, which is annoying.

"Hi, we're Counter Memories," I say. Despite it happening at every other gig, no bro-dude-guy calls out that I'm hot or anything. In fact, other than the light cheers, the packed bar is silent.

"1-2-3-4," I start off, with Robbie slamming his drumsticks together in time.

And we play our opener. My favourite song that we've written. A barn-burner. Fast and catchy and short and not-too-poppy.

And there's not really any reaction from anyone.

"Play Freebird!" some bro-dude-guy yells from the back of the bar to the laughs of his friends, and some other people in the crowd.

We just launch into our next song. Some people at the front nod their head to the beat, but that's about it. The song finishes and the last note fades away.

"Take off your top!" the same bro-dude-guy yells out, to more laughter.

"Make out with your bassist!" another guy yells. It echoes around the tiny bar, clear as glass. I can feel my ire rising, but I think of the test we have to pass. I look to Robbie, who just looks at me, annoyed by the two guys. He grits his teeth. Even Cat doesn't really have her wide-eyed look anymore.

We play our third song. A fast one. Still, no one dances. They just nod their heads to the beat. We finish, but before anyone can scream anything, we play another tune. I try to move around the stage, as much as I can with my keyboard, but it doesn't work. Cat shimmies and moves but to no avail. These people refuse to dance. The song ends.

"Take off your shirt!"

"Show us your tits!"

"Make out!"

"Get off the stage!"

It's the same two guys, but they've moved closer to the stage since then. Some people look a little annoyed, but there are some cheers from the crowd. I don't know how to react in a way that would please anybody but myself.

Cat thumbs at her bass a little bit, and we try to get through our fourth song. But the two guys influence the other guys around them, and they're talking, laughing, yelling over us. I stop playing and so do Robbie and Cat. Sinjin pokes his head up from the sampler board, looking like a curious prairie dog at the back of the stage.

"Can you guys shut up? We're trying to play!" Cat says, and I grimace because it just causes the expected: The guys start laughing and yelling things out even louder, and some of the crowd seems to be swaying on to their side.

This gig is well and thoroughly lost.

"Shut the fuck up!" I yell into the microphone, with some feedback squealing through the speakers. "We're here to play, we're going to play, you fucking assholes!" I start the keyboards for our fifth song and look right at the bro-dude-guy-asshole-motherfuckers. Right into their stupid faces.

I see one of them, a guy in a blue baseball cap, raise his hand in the air. He's holding a green beer bottle. And then he isn't. Throwing it, it spins in an arc, raising to the ceiling and coming down. The green becomes clearer and bigger and it hits me right in the face.

One second I'm watching it, the next my eyes are closed tight and I'm shocked and sputtering at the beer all over me. There are shouts and yells coming from somewhere. Ignoring the throbbing and stinging just above my left eyebrow, I wipe the beer out of my eyes.

Just in time to see little dorkus Robbie run from his drum kit and leap into the crowd of people with abandon. His hand balled into a fist, he swings repeatedly at the guy who threw the bottle. He lands some hard haymakers to the guy's chin, but is soon overwhelmed by bro-dude-guy's friends as they start to help him out.

The crowd surges, stumbles. Some people crowd around, others rush to leave. Cat's grabbing at me and looking at me and pulling me away from the brawl that has started where the crowd is. Sandra's climbing over the side of the stage, looking at me with wide eyes.

"You're bleeding!" Sandra squeals at me. Maybe it's because I'm so shocked, but I don't really feel hurt, or that I'm bleeding all that much. I just see Robbie getting punched in the face by three jock jerks. In my periphery, I see Sinjin and Sikowitz leap into the fray as well, helping Robbie out.

"Fuck it, right?" I say, looking at Cat. She wears the confused and wide-eyed look well. I release myself from both her hands and Sandra's frantic patting of my forehead. Two big steps and a jump, and I'm in the brawl too.

* * *

Cut to Counter Memories, their roadie, and their manager sitting in county jail, in the drunk tank. We're bruised and sore and smell like sweat, beer, blood, and action. Across the hall, visible behind our iron bars and their own iron bars across the hall, are the guys who were yelling from the crowd. I deathstare at them as hard as possible, and you better believe that they're quaking in their boots now that they've had their asses handed to them.

"Are you okay?" Robbie asks me. I want to chide him for a dumb question - I'm in jail, how can I be okay you idiot?! - but I know he's just worried about my head. The medic at the police station checked it and bandaged it and all that stuff. No stitches or anything, but it'll be tender and might split open if I'm not careful.

"I'm fine." I shrug, and that's the end of that.

We don't talk for a while. We hear other people in their cells talking, as well as other sounds I suppose are normal for a police station.

"I guess we didn't pass the test," Cat says quietly. She sits cross-legged and plays at the hem of her skirt. Her red velvet hair covers her face, but I can tell she's upset and that she's been very quietly crying too.

"Are you kidding?" Sikowitz asks with a certain amount of glee. "You passed with flying colours! That took real guts to do, and you did it! You guys are on your way!" He pumps his fist.

"Great," I mumble with annoyance. Robbie smiles at me, a crooked half-grin with a little bit of exasperation. I'm completely unaware of it at first, but I'm smiling back. And blushing a little too.

Suddenly, a door at the end of the hall opens with a loud clank, and there's multiple footsteps. At our little cell, three figures stop at the bars. We all stand up and shake the tired out of our limbs.

The jailor, along with my mom and dad, are standing there. My parents have a grim expression on their face. The exact same one they'd have if I missed curfew by a few hours or so. We just look at each other for a few moments.

"This is one hell of a hello," my dad sighs out.

"Nice to see you too," is my reply.


	13. Chapter 13

My folks bail us out of jail. They say that we're just being held as a stance on something. We haven't been charged with anything. The guys throwing the bottles are in trouble, but it's nice to know we're not.

So far. We have my parents to deal with. But they seem strangely calm about the whole thing.

The ride home is quiet and dark and awkward. Robbie, Cat, and I are crammed in the back, with my mom and dad in the front. We don't say anything and I try not to think. I stare out the front of my dad's shitty, beat-down truck as we float through side roads and rural routes and past all the old, familiar farms I called my neighbors. And then, my house.

Old, almost Victorian. White, with the big, red barn looming in the dark behind it. The gravel driveway curving up a hill. From somewhere, a dog howls. The last insects of summer buzz and hum around the porch light. Some cows moo. Various dirty tractors and other pieces of farm equipment sit around.

It's all so very dull. All so awkwardly familiar. A million little flashbacks play in my head. I suddenly feel incredibly tired. Like all the weight of my life is resting on my shoulders, and my house is the cause of it. Or my house reminds of it. Or whatever.

We pull up the house and pile out of the car as Sikowitz rolls the van behind us. He, Sinjin, and Sandra hop out, looking self-satisfied at something. We all trundle up into the house, carrying our overnight bags.

Secretly I thank my lucky stars that I'm not in another motel, but that's something I won't tell anyone.

* * *

After some small talk, my mom shows everyone up to their rooms, with Cat and Sandra sharing my old room while I take the couch. The three guys are sharing the guest room, which causes Robbie to purse his lips and give me a sad look.

"Sinjin screams in his sleep," he tells me. I shrug. "And one time, I'm pretty sure I woke up and Sikowitz was standing over me."

"Just for one more night, alright?" I say. He nods. And for some reason, I reach over and hug him. Just the two of us, standing at the base of the old wooden stairs to the top floor. Just us and the lightbulb dim and buzzing overhead. I feel instantly embarrassed at doing it, but it's too late to stop now.

"Goodnight," I say with a reserved smile.

"Yeah, goodnight." He walks past me, and up the stairs. I don't catch the look on his face, but he bails fast enough to let me know he's embarrassed too.

I move away from the stairs and through the living room to the kitchen. It looks so...small. Floral wallpaper, a couple of dishes in the sink. The cool night breeze coming in through the window. The wooden table in the corner where Mom, Dad, and I would sit and have our countless dinners.

Before I became too cool for them and started eating out with friends, or moving out, or whatever. I sit down at in my old dinner chair, and sigh with exhaustion. Everything is quiet and weird feeling and a little off.

Mom and Dad enter the kitchen too, looking reserved and exhausted themselves. They take up their chairs too: Dad across from me, and Mom to my left. She rubs my arm, smiling.

"Good to see you, sweetie," she says.

"Yeah, you too." I look to Dad. "Thanks again, you know. For getting us out."

"Not a problem," he says, and he smiles. When did he get so old? The lines in his face are a little deeper. The shadows under his eyes a little darker. The hair a little grayer.

"Trust me, not every night is like that, I can assure you," I tell them.

And then, despite how tired we all are, we talk. I unload into them. I tell them about waitressing, and Robbie being a DJ, and Sandra, and Cat, and touring, and playing, and every other little thing. Before I know it, I've exhausted every little aspect.

They'd probably know more already if I called them more often.

"Well, it sounds like you've been having quite a little adventure," Mom says with a strange - but totally familiar tone. Dad sighs.

"We're glad you're here, Jade," he says. "Have you thought about...you know, staying a while?"

I roll my eyes at him, almost involunarily.

"Dad...come on, we've been over this before."

"Well, it's just that...things are changing," he replies.

"Of course they are! I'm on a stage now, everything."

"That's not what I meant," he says to me and he looks at Mom for support.

"We've always been supportive of you and your dreams," Mom says. "We're just saying...maybe take a break for a bit."

"You're kidding me. It's only been a year."

"We know," Mom starts, "but we'd like you to come back home for a while."

"It doesn't sound like fun...your situation. Tonight kind of proved it...boys throwing bottles at you and everything. And for...not really a lot of money," Dad states.

"It's just the start..." I start.

"The start of what? You know that not many people make it in the industry," says Mom. "If people are throwing things at you, they're not liking you. Maybe this is it."

"Get some...qualifications," Dad interjects. "Make some money. Have some security before you try again."

I sigh and roll my eyes, which still doesn't faze them.

"Please," says Mom. "We'd like you here. Helping out, like you used to. We'd pay you and everything. No more of that big city."

"It's my home now!" I exclaim, sounding and feeling like a little girl, and regretting what I've just said, immediately. "Shit," I say to myself. Mom and Dad look at me with sympathy, though.

"Just...think about it, okay?" Dad says. "We'd like you here. Safe. Well fed. You look so tired."

I sigh. They look so vulnerable. And Mom's looking old like Dad too. Everything's so small. And it would be nice to have something other than organic refried soy ramen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And considering how backwards this area is, I won't be hearing any stupid Young Runaways for at least eight months.

"Alright," I say. "I'll stay. I'll think about it."

* * *

In the morning, as cool gray light filters into the kitchen and my parents do their farm chores, I tell everyone about my plans to stay at the farm. There are concerned looks, especially from Robbie and Sikowitz, but I tell them I just need some "me time" and that I'll probably be back.

I don't feel too sure about that though. It's looking to be one of the last great days of summer and I remembered the pond I'd like to go to on days like this.

They say it's my choice, and Sandra backs me up about work and things, saying she'll sort everything out when she gets back.

When we get a moment at the bottom of the stairs again, I hug Robbie once more. I guess it'll be regular thing now? I don't know.

"I'm not...totally giving up," I say.

"Yeah," he says, rubbing his hand through his curls.

"I'm just..."

"Hey," he starts, interrupting me. "I get it. Totally. I'll come visit every now and then if you decide to move back home."

He smiles a quirky little smile. It makes my heart fill up and I feel sad.

"You're a good friend, Robbie Shapiro," I tell him. He looks down at his hands. And nothing else is said.

* * *

Outside the front of the house, I hug everyone except Sinjin - because EW! - goodbye and watch them pile into the van. Cat opens up the side window and waves at me, her arm sticking out the window.

"Bye Jaaade!" she calls out. "We love you! You rock!"

I smile and wave back. I keep doing so as I watch the van putter away into the distance. It goes past a field, and disappears into the day.

Suddenly, I'm feeling kind of empty and forlorn.


	14. Chapter 14

I wake up to the grey light of early morning and remember where I am. My bed feels small, but it's warm and familiar, and I'm able to doze off again. Just like when I was a kid, sheets held tight in my arms, cocooning me with comfort.

Sometime later, I fully wake up. My dad's playing the cello downstairs - his one and only real hobby outside of everything to do with the farm. Normally at this time he'd be doing whatever chore it was that he had to do, but because it was fall-almost-winter, the farm chores were light. It allowed me to be serenaded by Bach's Air as a way to wake up, and I was grateful for it.

At around 11, me and my dad, both dressed warmly, went out to the pasture and rounded up the new, young cattle, mainly to bring them back into the barn. I had forgotten about the smells of cow butt and everything else, but I fell right back into the routine of helping herd the dumb creatures back down the path and back into the barn so they could be warm.

Looking at the little pen at the east end of the barn, I let myself squeal like a little girl when I saw Mary-Elizabeth, our orange barn cat. I squealed even harder when I saw her new kittens. I jogged up to it and leapt carefully into the pen. Mary-Elizabeth looked tired, but came to my lap as I sat down. She gave me a familiar little nudge of her head, as if to say she missed me.

The other little kittens, bounding around me like curious, furry, orange and grey balls all looked at me, swatting at and burrowing into my legs. I looked up at Dad, who had followed me. I smiled wide at him, and he smiled back. He looked just like the Dad I remembered. He pulled up a wooden crate and sat down next to me in the pen.

It wasn't hard to notice the "oof" he exhaled and the cracks in his bones.

"I love them," I tell him, picking up a little orange ball and petting him as his mom slid off my lap and into her hay bed with grace.

"You want one?" Dad asked me.

"I do...but...I can't. I'm not allowed pets in my apartment," I tell him.

"Like that would normally stop my little Jadelyn," he says. I roll my eyes at my stupid nickname/real-name/I never figured it out for sure. "Remember that one time you brought that lost dog home and hid it from us because your mother's allergic?"

We laugh, but it's a sad, nostalgic laugh.

"Little Jadelyn's all grown up, I guess" I say. Another little ball of fur stumbles to Dad's leg and he picks her up, petting it.

"I know," he says a little sadly. "When I saw you the other night in that cell, you looked so much older."

"Gee, thanks."

"That's not what I meant," he shoots out quickly, apologetically. "Just...you're not a little girl singing Ginger Fox songs anymore. You're a rock and roll singer now."

I laughed.

"Oh yeah, I'm a star," I say sarcastically. A little grey cat - the runt of the litter, it would seem - mewled at my leg and I picked him up to be petted too.

"Maybe, maybe not. But you're your own woman now. You used to be your own girl, but now, yeah, you're a woman now."

We chuckled at that. But I knew that something was coming. It always does. I petted the little runt a little harder and he purred in appreciation. He burrowed deep into my lap, and I thanked God that Robbie wasn't here. He'd just be sneezing and complaining about allergies or the smell or something. I waited for my Dad to give me a lesson or to tell me off for going to New York.

"So..." he started. Here it comes. "How's being in a band?"

Wait, what? No lesson? No "you should take over the farm because you're our only child" speeches. It takes me a moment to regain my ground.

"It's tough, to be honest," I reply. "But, I mean...we have fun too."

"No drugs or anything, I hope?" he says. And he's serious too! Cute. I laugh.

"No, no, no. Good lord, didn't you meet Robbie? If it was in the same room as us he'd start having a hissy fit!"

I chose not to tell him about the underage booze at the clubs we'd all been drinking, and the fake IDs that Sikowitz gave us, though. Or the fact that Cat seemed perpetually on something and it was still up in the air about whether or not she actually is high.

But he smiles, wide.

"That Robbie guy your boyfriend?" he asks me. I roll my eyes.

"No Dad, just a friend. He's helped me out a whole bunch of times...but it's not like that," I say. There's a weird feeling in me when I say it, but it passes.

"Good. I'm glad someone's looking out for you. I worry about you. Mom too."

"Yeah, I know."

"Because we love you very much."

"Jeez, Dad, I know."

There's a moment of silence, where we just pet the cats and not think about anything.

"I love you guys too, you know," I say. And he smiles in a way I haven't seen in a long time.

* * *

It takes about a week of being at the farm to get bored with the routine. The nostalgic and warm becomes kind of cold and distant. I couldn't put my finger on why it was feeling this way. It was a different kind of unrest from what made me leave for the city. I was actually getting along with Mom and Dad, eating their homemade goodies like a starving horse and having nice nights with them. But that didn't stop me from being bored and annoyed. I didn't complain, but I was getting testy. Getting antsy.

But I just felt myself itching for...something. I thought about that dork Robbie way too much. Wondering what he was up to. Wondering if he was wondering what I was up to. I sent him a couple of texts but we hadn't talked much because of long distance rates and everything.

With frost on the ground and chores done, I dressed in my winter clothes and set out into the afternoon. It had been a week and I still hadn't visited my favourite place on the farm yet. I had kind of forgotten about it, but Dad said it was still there. Knowing this, I set down the road to our neighbour's place, taking a sharp left at the wire fence separating our properties, and walked and walked and walked some more.

I came upon the wooded area, lit up well in the sun. The light filtering through the bare tree branches gave off some kind of magical air, and I remembered being a kid and thinking that fairies played around here.

I decided that I'd continue to believe in fairies forever, because it's a good, warm feeling to believe in something like that, even if you're a supposed grownup.

A few more minutes and I had come upon the place.

The Cow Graveyard.

Whenever a cow got sick or old or whatever, Dad would move it from the barn and "take care of it", away from the still-living cows so that they didn't freak out. And then they'd decompose and nature would run its course.

This had been happening in almost the same spot for three generations in our family, since the farm was first bought by the West family all those years ago.

So in the very corner of our property, there was a patch of forest with lots and lots of cow bones.

As a little girl, whenever there wasn't something freshly dead, I'd come and play and have adventures by myself here. The bones of the ribcages and whatever else could be used to make forts and obstacles, and everything in-between. To ten-year-old me, I had my own city of bleached white and teeth-stained yellow to play in.

Hmm, no wonder I got so morbid as a high-school kid.

High-school memories of coming here to write or to do whatever float through my head. They lead to thoughts about whatever happened to these people that I used to know. These little sprinkles of life that had been a part of me for some time, and now were just apart from me.

This is why I love this place. The clarity. You wouldn't find that in New York City. The quiet and the ability to clear my mind. I stay until my toes and fingers start freezing from the settled cold of the day. Remembering the past, wondering about the future.

* * *

After dinner, I borrow Dad's truck and drive to the edge of town. It's a little one-street thing that isn't part of the main city where Counter Memories played, but isn't part of the neighbouring town either. It's in-between and close to my house.

The route is burned into my memory, as is the bar. The Manor House. A small dive that doesn't have any security or any scruples, and thus became the watering hole for a lot of people in high-school.

This is the world we live in these days.

Entering, I see that over the course of a year or so, nothing's changed. The furniture - red velvet and black wood and British pub styling - might be a touch more worn and faded than it once was.

I can't remember what compelled me to come here, but I buy a bottle of beer anyways and settle in at a corner seat at the edge of the bar. Of course, of course, of course despite the fact the place isn't that busy, there's some people I recognize.

Amy Shuster, who picked on me daily, and is the only person to ever beat me up, ever. And her boyfriend Dylan Grey. Both look exactly the same, shit, even dressed the exact same, as they did in high-school. And they're probably still going out.

Then I realize what's been bugging me for the past week. What this weird feeling is. Before I can elaborate and let the thought fall over me with the same kind of clarity back at home, I'm interrupted.

"Well, look who it is," says a familiar voice. Amy, with her blonde hair and tanned skin and bitchface, is at the bar next to me. She motions to the bartender and gets a bottle of beer handed to her. She doesn't look me in the eye. "How's it going, gank?"

"Pretty good. Your boyfriend's checking me out. Might get up on it, if you know what I mean," I reply with a raise of my eyebrow and a smirk. If this is anything like high school, then Amy's still a jealous little creep.

Because, hey, I might not have been fake-tanned and a cheerleader like her, but I had tits, and would win the talent show every year even though she had a totally killer dance routine or whatever.

And of course she's still a jealous little bitch. She turns to me, looking like she's sucking on a very large lemon.

"What are you doing back here?" she spits out. "Thought that we drove all the witches out of town centuries ago."

"Wow, did you learn about that in community college? I _know _you didn't actually try to read, did you?"

That same old electricity I had before Robbie and Sandra and Cat softened me. That same feeling crawling through my skin. My inherent nastiness and uncaring and power. The same feeling I had right before jumping into the crowd at the bar and starting that fight.

And winning that fight.

"Listen," I say before she can retort. "I don't want to talk to you. Ever. Ever again. You got that?"

She smirks and crosses her arms. So that's what I look like when I do it.

"Come on, bitch. Make me leave," she says. She straightens her back, tries to look menacing.

I don't take the bait. I stand up and swig my beer and leave the half-finished bottle on the bar.

"You know what, Amy?" I ask. I move my face to hers, looking right into her glaring eyes. "I feel bad for you. Still stuck here. I'm just visiting. When you're forty years old and still getting drunk here, at the fucking Manor House of all places, on a Thursday night just so you can avoid going home to the trailer park, think about me. Think about how I left this place, and think about how I got out, and how my life isn't a sad, low-class tragedy like yours will become. I'm special. You're not. And I want you to remember that for the rest of your days."

I step past her, choosing not to look back. The air outside the bar is cool and refreshing and I smile my biggest smile. The decision. The realization.

I'm going back to New York. I need that fast-paced world. I need the culture and the changes that happen by the minute. I need to be scared of the future. I don't need to be comfortable. I don't need the same faces. I don't need recognizable faces and the same old, same old.

I need to be in Counter Memories. I'm not the only special one. Robbie's special. Cat's special. Sinjin's special. Sandra and Sikowitz are special too.

As I drive through the night, the only thing ahead of me is the road, illuminated just by the truck's headlights.

They're my friends.

We're a band.

We're going to conquer the universe.

* * *

**A/N - Holy moly! 14 chapters! Thank you to everyone following and keeping up with the story and to those sweet, sweet reviewers. I realize that the story is still a little slow, but now that the pieces are in place, things are about to THROW DOWN AND GET EXCITING. Things to look forward to: Naked Trina, cute hillbillies, Ryder Daniels, and much more! Thanks again!**


	15. Chapter 15

Early morning New York traffic leaves Mom, Dad, and myself stuck in gridlock coming into the city. We sit in the truck quietly. I hate to admit being nervous and excited to be coming back to the city. But I am. I keep it restrained though, acting nonchalant. Mainly because of Mom and Dad.

When I told them I was coming back to New York - without sticking around at the farm any longer - they took it quite well. And by quite well, I mean they didn't freak out _too_ hard.

Mom had the thin lip thing and the crossed arms of worry, and Dad tried one more time to convince me what had to be done.

"You need a degree...any degree...to make it in this world," he told me, looking at me dead in the eyes with such conviction as to make me uncomfortable.

"You don't have a college anything," I said back without thinking too hard. Because I knew what his reply would be.

"Because I have the farm, and I had a little girl to take care of. Dance and acting lessons aren't cheap."

Weirdly enough, it wasn't a yelling match. I didn't storm out of the house. We reasoned and talked and acted diplomatic and listened to each other and came to agreements. Like adults do, I guess. The agreement being that I do what I want as long as I'm safe. And that Mom and Dad will let me back home if things go wrong.

So in the morning after my little bar trip, we all got up super-early and did our chores super-early and they decided to drive me back to the City. And rush hour being what it is, we get trapped in almost-gridlock.

"This is why I like the subway," I say.

"Is it expensive?" Mom asks.

"Not really. Monthly pass, gets me around."

The car moves a few feet up the highway.

"So...uh..." I start. "If you guys ever want to visit, you're totally welcome to. Not that I have room or anything. And if you want to see the band play...free tickets, of course." Dad smiles wide.

"We'd like that. I'll bring my earplugs," he says with a smile and Mom laughs and I roll my eyes at the obviousness of the joke. Parents, am I right?

* * *

After buying me some lunch at the deli down the road from my house, my parents are gone, just like that. The air in my tiny little apartment is stale, and nothing's really been moved or anything. My bills and mail are in a neat little pile, thanks to Sandra's intervention.

I text her, telling her I'm back a little earlier than expected, and I thank her for being nice to my mail and for making my bed for me. She texts back a smiley-face, but I'm pretty sure I can hear her giddy squeal from the other end of the city. I also text Cat, letting her know that we should hang out more.

"Kay kay!" she texts back.

I don't text Sinjin or Sikowitz because screw them they'll find out that I'm back soon enough.

I look at the bills and the mail, the whole time thinking about what I should text Robbie. I don't know why finding the perfect text for him is so important, but it just is. But already the apartment feels stifling, already I want to get out on to the streets.

Despite the chill and clouds in the air, I walk to the strip club where Robbie DJs to see if he's in. Talking to Deano, the bouncer, I find out that he's there, and I'm let in. Since it's Tuesday, and it's early afternoon, there's not a lot of people there. Some slow song plays as a stripper spins mirthlessly in the out-of-place dark blue light.

I walk past the stage and up the stairs to his cramped DJ booth, where he plays on his phone, waiting for the song to end. He looks relaxed, leaning back in his chair.

"Guess who's back, dork," I say. He's startled for a moment, shooting his head up from the phone.

"Holy moly!" he exclaims. "What's the deal?" I smile wide.

"Yeah, good to see you too, dork."

"Getting your 'dork' quota up?"

"Making up for lost time," I shoot back, with a big smile. He smiles too. Seriously, I can't stop smiling at him. It's a problem. I guess I'm happy, genuinely happy. "Dork."

"You know, you might be the only goth farmgirl in the whole wide world," he says with a big fat smile on his face.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. How long you here for?" I ask.

"All afternoon."

"Shit."

"I know. Still, hang out! I'll let you play some tunes, if you want." He motions to his laptop, but then holds up his hand, telling me to wait a second.

The song begins to fade away, and Robbie flicks a switch next to the big microphone in the little DJ booth.

"That was Melanie! Give a big hand for Melanie!" he says so that his voice echoes throughout the club. "She'll be comin' round later so remember to say please if you want a private dance!"

He looks at me and I smile at how dorky he sounds.

"Alright!" he continues, "On stage right now we have Denise! Denise the Piece! Get your hands together and welcome Denise!" He presses a button to turn the microphone off and presses a couple keys on his computer. A new song comes up, and I groan.

"Young Runaways?!" I ask-exclaim.

"Denise wants to dance with it, don't shoot the messenger." It's not the single. It's a dancey-electro-funk track called "Tornado".

"Definitely a stripper song," I say. He nods and smiles.

* * *

What happens is that I pull up a chair and Robbie and we hang out in the cramped booth together. We talk about what has happened over the past week - admittedly, not a whole lot - and if there's anything cool that might happen. Not a whole lot on that stage either.

Something magical happens, however.

One-by-one, Counter Memories and its crew start cramming into the DJ booth. Cat finishes babysitting for some heiress, and comes bounding up the stairs like some happy little kid.

"Hi hi!" she comments with a wave, and she plops into my lap with an "oof!" from both of us. "I missed you!"

"I missed you too!"

"Yay!" she exclaims.

Then Sandra showed up, all squealing and giggling about boys like nothing's changed at all. Sinjin and Sikowitz show up too, and it's all of us crammed into this narrow little room. Sinjin brings his girlfriend, the bassist from the Young Runaways. She hangs off of him like she'd die if they weren't together. She's curvy and way too hot for Sinjin, but to each their own.

"Trina!" she exclaims, and we shake hands. It's getting cramped and hot in the booth and I have to smush myself closer to Robbie to get any leeway or comfort. He grins at me and motions to the microphone. He flicks the button to turn it on, whispering "Anna" in my ear. I grin back to him.

"Alrighty, next up is the beautiful, bouncy, bodacious Anna! Give it up for Anna!" I say into the microphone, before Robbie flicks the switch and a hardcore techno song from the early nineties plays. We both laugh, hard, and he rests his hand on my shoulder.

"Don't steal my job!" he says.

"Pfft, yeah right, like I'd ever want to work in a hellhole like this!" I say right back. We share another laugh, and he looks at me in the same way he looked at me back at the motel pool.

God, it feels good to be back.

Suddenly, Sikowitz shoves his way over to us.

"We should party!" he says. "A welcome back party for our singer!"

"Yep," I say, announcing myself to the booth. "Honour me! Party in my honour!"

Sikowitz pulls a bottle of vodka from his shirt sleeve, like magic.

"I came prepared!" he states.

"Well then, let's do this," Robbie says. And we share another look, another smile.

* * *

Robbie takes the shift of the DJ that comes after him, basically meaning that we can be in the booth for the rest of the day and night, and we all start getting drinks and things from the bar. The narrow booth suddenly becomes our little party central.

"So, where are the rest of Young Runaways?" I ask Trina when I'm near her. We sit on the edge of a battered couch, and I don't want to even think about what kind of stains are on it. Trina rolls her eyes.

"My miss-priss of a sister wouldn't be caught dead in a place like this," she states with another, even larger eye roll. "Plus she would hate it if Becky-poo were here, too."

"Becky?" I ask.

"Beck, our drummer," she says.

"You mean that super-hot guy with the hair?" She nods.

"Yeah. They're dating."

"Of course they are," I deadpan. She smiles.

"He's our man-candy. Me and her are the lady-candy. Get the girls-and-gay-dudes wanting our drummer, get the frat boys and lesbians loving the singer and the bassist. At least that's what our manager tells us," she explains.

Sikowitz leans over, interrupting us.

"Who's your manager?" he asks. He's scrunched his forehead down in pure-serious-mode.

"His name's Lane," she replies. Sikowitz grumbles to himself and crosses his arms.

"Shit," is all he says before turning his attention to Robbie and what he's playing.

"What's that about?" I ask Trina, but she just shrugs, seemingly moving her gaze and attention on to the finer parts of her fingernails.

* * *

We drink more, and start getting a little silly. But it's still a slow night at the club, and we're allowed to get away with it.

Sinjin and Trina start making out - pretty heavily - on the couch, pretty much shoving Cat off of it.

"Lucky," she says to me with her laugh. "Not because it's Sinjin though!" she replies when I look at her, aghast. "Just because I haven't had a boyfriend in so long!"

"No time for boys!" Sikowitz yells out. "Only time for Counter Memories!" Sinjin looks up from Trina, aghast. "Except you Sinjin, you were already dating Ms. Vega here!" Sinjin nods and goes back to fondling Trina.

"This band is on its way!" Sikowitz adds. "There's so much in store for all of you!" He points to me, Cat, and Robbie, who just shrugs and sips at his gin and tonic. "The three Ms of a successful band!"

"Mmmmm!" Cat calls out, even though none of us knows what that is.

"Exactly!" Sikowitz says with a flourish. "Mobility! Merchandise! Music!"

"Great," I deadpan. "What does any of that mean?" He looks at me.

"Well, Ms. West, goth farmer of Northern New York," he says as I roll my eyes, "It means you're going to tour more, have things to sell, and you'll have music to sell too! Money, money, money!"

"Money isn't everything," Robbie says. "Music is art! Art is life!"

"Tell that to my monthly rent," I say.

"You won't have to worry with me! We'll be the best band in the world!" Sikowitz says, doing a little dance in the cramped space. He sends a cup of coconut rum-and coke spilling to the floor, but he just ignores it.

But it's the idea that things are about to get bigger that excites me. Drinking some more, I realize that after tonight, there's more ridiculous insanity around the corner.

We all end up getting a little pink in the face from alcohol. We walk together in the windy night, dropping each other off at our apartments and wherever else. Just the neon lights guiding us home.

* * *

Winter hits New York City like a bag full of bricks, sending pelting cold ice-storms and heavy snowfall into the city. Things are constantly grinding to a halt. The power goes out more than once. Subway delays. A city in peril. Every now and then, you hear about a death of an old person, found frozen and alone in their apartment. That gets me down more than it used to, and I have no idea why.

We also start seeing and hearing the Young Runaways a whole lot more. Trina was nice at the party and all, but the band itself, who we saw all those months ago, seem like a weird abstract concept. They make it big. Like genuinely big. The song "Tearaway Play" - which I grudgingly admit is actually really good - shoots up the PearTunes charts and the video on Youtube breaks a whole bunch of viewing records. I see the high cheekbones of Tori Vega and the hair of Beck-the-drummer on tabloid covers. "Baby on the way?" the covers of People and the Inquirer ask, and I roll my eyes because of course she'd date and possibly be impregnated by the prettiest man I've seen in a while. Sinjin gets into a funk because Trina is away with Tori, Beck, Andre-the-guitarist all the time. They're starting a mini-national tour and appear on TV a couple of times. It's all very, very, very annoying. They become less "people that we sort of knew that one time" to "celebrities we barely know anything about". We even hear "Tornado" in a movie trailer.

"Damn that Lane," Sikowitz says when Robbie and I tell him about that. We don't ask, because his face says to not talk to him about it, at all. It's the only time I've ever seen him seriously angry.

Because it's so cold and shitty out almost all the time, Counter Memories stays in a lot. We rent out rehearsal space and play, play, play, play, and play some more. It's a small room where we set up our instruments and pay by the hour to hone our sound. There's a corkboard with our plans on it and we play until we're numb. Anything to be out of the cold and in a hot room.

We also write. Throwing out most of our old songs, we begin really laying down new sounds, verses, choruses, everything. Challenging songs that have me picking up a guitar - which I'm not super great at - every now and then. Sinjin's sampling and keyboarding suddenly become integral and I begrudgingly accept the fact that he's really, truly, completely part of the band. Cat's bass is thick as a well-cut steak, the notes and complexities new to me, but never over-bearing.

The excitement about what we have drives me into fits of frenzy. I love the songs we make. Fast-paced dance-rock with anthemic twists and catchy hooks. I like that we're making music that I might actually listen to if I wasn't in the band. Lots of times, and out of character for me normally, I find myself gushing to Sandra and Robbie about our possibilities.

It's great little edge of your seat stuff, and I feel vindicated for all the hard work we've put in. I begin to feel special, begin to get that wanting-to-do-things feeling back. We book an exhausting schedule of back-to-back-to-back-to-back gigs, often playing shows for six or seven days a week.

"Another way to practice," says Sikowitz.

And the crowds really like us, too! Sikowitz helps us get actual clubs and venues. Tiny venues, maybe for about 100 people each, but way more than the tiny bars we were playing. And people dance along and clap and cheer for us! It's a rush, a great feeling. I can see the breathless smile Robbie has on his face after we play a show, and I know I'm mirroring it.

But the same thing happens after every concert we play. People come up to us after and ask us if there's a CD to buy, or a T-shirt to get. And every time, we have to say no.

"I don't think you guys are ready to make CDs," Sikowtiz tells us as we pack up after a show. "But look into the t-shirts, okay? I'll set you guys up with a manufacturer."

I decide that Cat and I should design some of our merchandise, which goes over pretty well. One day, I invite her over and we brave sharp winds and ice and wet snow to get to a Starbucks.

My boss at the cafe would be upset I wasn't in an independent, organic, vegan place, but whatever. Cat and I take our places at big comfy chairs next to a fake fireplace. Cat pulls out a big sparkly sketchbook, which makes mine look sad and dark. We sketch and stencil and mess around in silence for a while, just enjoying each other's company.

Cat eventually shows me some concepts for a band logo, and they're really neat. I thought that they'd be girly like her, but they're minimalist, simple, and really professional-looking.

"Wow! Cat, those are great!" I exclaim. I point to a couple I think we might be able to use, and she sets off on improving those ones. This makes me stop, because mine are totally not as good as hers. I try to give directions from over her shoulder, but I don't add much.

After an hour or so, we have a logo we both like. I take a picture of it with my PearPhone and send it to Robbie and Sinjin for approval.

"If we get a logo, we'll be a real band!" Cat exclaims to me, her eyes wide with cheer and excitement.

"Cat, we _are_ a real band," I let her know, re-taking my seat across from her.

"That's not what my brother says," she intones, biting her lip with worry. "He says I'll never be part of a real band. He's kind of mean about it."

I'm kind of shocked. I thought they - despite being super weird - were really tight.

"He...he actually said that?" I ask, dumbfounded.

"He said that people like me and him aren't supposed to make it in the world," she says, looking down at her hands. "He says that, with our problems, we're just supposed to fade away."

I think this is the first time I've ever seen her upset. Her big, expressive eyes are too powerful to hide the tears that are beginning to rest just below them.

"Look..." I start.

"I was thinking about quitting, but then you came back," she says, now smiling. "You and Robbie are perfect together and with you back, we can keep being perfect!"

I almost spit out my coffee at that.

"Perfect...?" I wonder.

"Without you guys, we wouldn't have a band. We wouldn't be...I dunno what the word is..." she trails off, pressing her finger to her lips in scrunched-up thought.

"What do you mean, _perfect together_?" I ask her.

"Hmmm...like...peanut butter and chocolate. Or banana and peanut butter. Or peanut butter and jelly...peanut butter and Bibble! I guess you're like peanut butter, and Robbie is some kind of other condiment...or...what were we talking about?"

"Do you think Robbie and I are...like...dating?" I ask. She laughs. Hard. An easy-to-imitate 'ha-ha-ha-ha!'

"No...but you should!" she says with even more wide-eyed innocence and enthusiasm. "Your babies would be totally awesome!" Another hefty laugh from her side of things.

I make the motion for her to stop. I take a breath, center myself, start from the beginning.

"What did you mean by Robbie and me being...perfect together?" I ask. For some reason I'm genuinely interested in finding out. It gnaws at the shadows in my brain.

"You guys are making great music together! You have chemistry! My brother tells me that sort of thing is key to a band but he doesn't think Counter Memories will ever have it, ever, and then I tell him the only chemistry he's ever had was that secret chemistry that almost got him in jail for a long time..."

Cat's interrupted by my phone beeping three times. I look at it. Robbie and Sinjin approve the logo design. I send it off to Sikowitz.

"We're a real band now," I tell Cat, smiling at her and waving my phone. "And we're going to prove your brother wrong." She smiles back at me, beaming.

* * *

**A/N - To all the readers of this story: thank you from the bottom of my heart. You're great, the reviews are great. This story has been a challenge, but I'm cracking it, and I hope to keep all of you entertained or intrigued to the very end!**


	16. Chapter 16

Let me set the scene for you. Counter Memories, their manager, and their manager's assistant are all sitting in the waiting room of their rehearsal space, waiting for a previous band to vacate. Outside is windy and cold and it's sleeting, and I think we all relish in the warmth and sweat of the place. We all crowd around a little waiting area with a couple of couches, and some vending machines.

Robbie and I are tired from work and are flopped lazily on the ratty couch. Tonight's the one night in a long, long time that I really haven't felt like doing any music stuff. My body is stiff and my legs are sore. I rest them up on the table and try to fold into my hoodie for all the warmth and comfort it provides. I would kill a baby for a foot massage right about now.

Cat and Sandra lean against the vending machines, sipping crappy hot-chocolate vended into styrofoam cups. Sikowitz paces back and forth, talking to the owner of a club that he wants us to play.

Sinjin comes bounding down the stairs from outside, his hair wet and his cheeks red from the cold weather. He's still grinning though, in his creepy, crooked way. His eyes sparkle behind the melting snow on his glasses.

"We've got the invite to what might be the party of the century," Sinjin says, holding up a manilla folder, wet with his fingers and melting snow. He tears it open, and out fall laminated cards attached to lanyards. Just enough for everyone. I pick one of them up off the table. On the front of them are the Young Runaways, posing, trying to look cool - and in the case of Tori Vega, failing at it miserably.

"The Young Runaways Platinum Party," Robbie reads out loud over my shoulder. "VIP invite." Sikowitz perks up from his phone call, hanging up on the guy on the other line.

"We're going to their party?" Sandra gasps. "Holy shit!"

"What's the big deal?" I ask, looking bored. "It's just a party."

"It's. The. Most. Exclusive. Party. Of. The. Year." Sandra almost looks mad at me.

"So?" I ask again to get a rise out of her. It works, as she grimaces in disapproval of my apathy.

"Young Runaways are proud to announce," Robbie continues reading off the back of the card as I flip it around, "That they have recently gone platinum, being the first independent band to sell one-million records since the early 1990s. To thank the people who helped us get here, we are throwing a party to celebrate. Fancy dress. These cards act as your ticket."

"Fancy dress!" Cat gasps, probably already picturing what she might wear. Puffy skirt, like every other day, I would assume.

"Trina gave them to me. She remembers us helping them all that long-ass time ago," Sinjin says. "She figured we could party with them. She had a good time at the strip club that one time."

"Do they need a DJ?" Robbie asks, but Sinjin shrugs and shakes his head. Robbie's hopes look a little dashed.

"Probably not. I think they're importing a guy from Sweden."

"More importantly, will there be an open bar?" I ask.

"What do you think?" Sandra says. "The Young Runaways wouldn't be cheap with something like that."

"Sell-outs!" Cat says loudly, shocking all of us. "My brother calls them sell-outs!"

"They are _not_," Sandra says. She seems actually peeved. I wonder if she has a Young Runaways poster above her bed. Then I think that Counter Memories doesn't even have an idea for a poster, let alone anything other than shirts. I keep my mouth shut.

"My brother says they're sell-outs because even though they're on an indie label, they're going to be on a major label soon and that their second album isn't going to be as good as their first. That they're a flash-in-the-pan!" Cat says. She's not being vindictive to Sandra or anything. She just seems kind of...ignorant of her statements. Innocent to the point of annoyance.

"Trina told me that they're grooming her sister to become a solo artist," Sinjin says, plopping into the couch across from Robbie and I.

"That sounds terrible," I say.

"It is," Sinjin replies. "If Trina is out of a job..." he trails off, thinking of...whatever it is that might happen to Trina. Maybe she'll become a prostitute.

"It sounds terrible because Tori Vega is not the most interesting person," I throw in, to Sandra's gasps of protest. "And the fact that she thinks she'd be the center of the universe is _insane._"

"It's the band that's great," Robbie says, supporting me. "Not just the singer. They have chemistry, they work better as a team."

"Exactly," I say, sharing a knowing look with Robbie. Sandra huffs out some air.

"You don't know what you're talking about," she says. "Tori Vega is the personality of the group. The rest of them are weaker without her. Tori Vega gives them power. Listen to 'Danger in the Air' and tell me that isn't just straight up her."

I shrug.

"It doesn't matter, in the end, does it?" I ask. "They're making the big bucks, right? They're doing the right thing, no matter what." Sandra bites her lip in deep thought. Sinjin shows off a watch that Trina had bought him, as if to hammer the point home.

"Damn that Lane," Sikowitz says, exasperated. He flops down in a flurry of bundled up clothes next to Sinjin.

"What's the deal with you guys?" Cat asks, full of wonder. Robbie shifts in his seat, perked up with interest. Sikowitz looked around at the expectant faces and perked up himself. He, apparently, had some Shakespearean training back in the day, and had once told us that those that can't _do,_ go on to _manage._

So the guy had a flair for the dramatic, and liked to use every opportunity he could to show off his penchant for...overemphasis.

"Well, it was a long time ago. The Late-Nineteen-Nineties. Everyone thought that techno was the next big thing. The White Stripes and The Strokes had yet to start the Newest Rock Revolution. The internet was in its infancy. Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't all puffy in the face..." Sikowitz started up.

We all groaned loudly. Cat squealed loudly, like something was dying inside her.

"...fine," said Sikowitz. "I'll just never talk again."

"Really? Don't get my hopes up," I say. He glares at me and it's very, very satisfying.

* * *

Time passes, and because everything just seems to occur in my life at a lightning speed, it's the night of the fancy Young Runaways party.

It was in the news, and Sandra was right. Apparently, it really is an exclusive party. There will be celebrities, athletes, business moguls, important people. Models. Robbie was hoping to hook up with one of them, which is just so dumb in his case I barely acknowledged its existence as an idea.

It's hard not to feel a little left out and weirded out when Counter Memories are pretty much nothing, and even we get an invite. Because of one silly thing.

Cat comes over a few hours beforehand with a massive makeup bag and her outfit in a dry-cleaning bag.

"I used to want to be a makeup artist," she tells me. "Like, for models. I know all the tricks. We are going to look _good._"

"Please, I thought we looked good all the time," I say, as a joke.

"Yeah but this winter has been really sucky for bundling up and we all look like big lumps in our scarves and stuff!" she says, laughing at 'lumps', I assume. It makes me smile, and I try to relax.

Because something about this party was making me tense. Maybe it's because it's the Young Runaways. Or that my outfit cost a little too much. Or...whatever.

Cat and I spend our time eating and doing our hair and makeup and listening to music. We dance around, we get cheered up a little. This crappy, crappy weather, and the fact I stayed at home for a week, had really put a damper on the mood of the band, even after my return party. Like we were still this fragile thing despite the confidence we exuded. But I ignore that train of thought, beginning to feel warmed up inside. We mix rum and cola together, and pre-drink a little.

For once, I feel kind of like a girl having a girly time. Kind of enjoying myself. Sometimes you have to abandon pretensions of being too-cool for anything. I guess I'm slowly learning that as Cat beams up at me from her makeup kit.

* * *

So yes, Jade West, queen of not-caring, is currently dressed incredibly fancy, going to a party with people she sort-of-won't-admit-to-being-friends-with. A party thrown by people who bug her, forcing her out into terrible weather.

Cat and I head down to the subway from my apartment. I'm dressed in black-high heels and a black dress that is tight, short, and shows off too much cleavage. I'm barely kept warm by a thin coat. Cat's dressed almost the same, but pink all over, and with a some kind of miracle bra that does some serious wonders to her chest.

We meet up with almost-everyone else on the subway platform. Robbie's running behind, so he's going to meet us at the party. Sandra's wearing blue and looks good. She gushes over me and Cat, but there's something in her eyes that's a little strange, a little sad. It's a brief flash, but it's there, and it's tough to ignore before it's gone.

Sandra turns to Sikowitz and Sinjin, with her arm out, "presenting" them. She helped out in getting clothes, and they look good, if only, maybe, a little 1970s. Sinjin couldn't look cool if his life depended on it, but I give Sandra points for trying. Sikowitz is in a mustard yellow suit and a white shirt. He tugs at his clothes, annoyed.

"No coconut storage at all," he grumbles. "I mean, it fits perfectly around my junk, but the lack of coconuts is just annoying me."

The train comes into the station, drowning out the sounds of my retching.

* * *

There are paparazzi - honest to goodness photographers - at the entrance to the party. It's at some swanky Manhattan hotel. Not the Trump Tower, but somewhere else, and I file that away as some kind of petty ammo against Young Runaways. Counter Memories are virtually ignored as we pass by the flashbulbs on the red carpet. We show our tickets/cards/lanyards/necklaces/whatever at the front door, and get let in. The lobby of the hotel has been turned into a coat room and I shed my outer layer, giving it to a lady for her to give it back to me at the end of the night.

We follow the sounds and lights to an elegant ballroom, outfitted in decadent purple and black. Shimmering plastics. Various photos of Young Runaways posing, some of which I recognize from magazines they'd been on.

There's a very large bar with very attractive bartenders. A massive dancefloor. A stage with some DJ playing some quiet tunes, some remixes. They're not as good as Robbie's playlist choices, and there's definitely something Swedish about him, so I guess Sinjin was right or whatever.

Young Runaways wouldn't be here yet. In fact, only the losers of the world - like Counter Memories and that weird looking jerk in the corner - would be. But it led to some thinking. I had a serious girl-hard-on for that Beck guy and figured I could probably steal him from Tori, at least for a night.

"Bands never come to their own parties on time," Cat said to me, offering some sage advice when I tell her of my plans to seduce Beck-the-drummer. It's not even like she's worried about me causing any trouble. She just goes with her own flow, and in her odd and endearing way, is looking out for my best interests.

Counter Memories - minus Robbie, still - take up a location at the bar, ordering the fanciest drinks we can, because they're free. Looking over the huge room, it can feel overwhelming. Sikowitz is next to me, leaning against the bar. He doesn't gaze over the room with the rest of us. He just stares intently at the drink, hunched over the bar like a real-true-blue alcoholic.

"What's your problem?" I ask him.

"They really are sell-outs," he replies into his drink. He would look less ridiculous if it wasn't a blue pina colada inside a hollowed out coconut. I turn around and lean against the bar, just like him.

"Isn't this what you want for us? To be rich and popular and all that shit?"

"Not like this...I want you to be popular but without..." he trails off. He's not normally at a loss for words, and he just shakes his head.

"What?" I ask, trying to coax anything out of him. He looks at me, an odd piece of non-wacky humanity flowing through his eyes. For a second, I forget he's a crazy coconut-loving man with a strange sense of reality.

"How much do you think this party cost?" he asks me, and I shrug. "Something tells me an indie label _or _Young Runaways can't front this much cash."

"So they're sell-outs. Big deal. They're not scrounging for money and playing crappy gigs anymore. They made it. Good for them. Buying in is the same as selling out."

"Yeah, but who did they have to step on to get this high up? I mean...a little over a year and they're already gaining serious world-dominance?"

"The world's changing," is all I can come up with. "The way people get music these days is different."

Sikowitz just shrugs and sips at his drink.

"When was the last time you read a music blog that had the Young Runaways mentioned?" he asks. All he does is ask questions with easy answers, as if to fumble towards a point. "It's all been tabloids, major publications, right? The songs are fine, but people aren't talking about the songs anymore. It's about who's dating who, what they're wearing, blah blah blah. Wait and see. Tonight's going to be quite the night. Tori Vega - and their manager - are more calculating than you think."

And he leaves it at that, ordering another drink and choosing to ignore me. Luckily, my phone buzzes. It's Robbie. _I'm here, where u at?_ I text him back, and soon he's with us at the bar.

I hate to admit it, but he cleans up nicely. Almost too nicely. Grey, form fitting suit, and a blue tie.

"Sup, dork?" I say. He just shrugs.

"Work sucks," is his reply.

"I know." We smile at the Blink-182 lyric we've just done together, and he orders a beer. His Sikowitz-Super-Fake-ID works wonders like it's supposed to. Robbie doesn't tell me I look good or anything, even though I know I look good, and for some dumb reason, it bugs me a little. Maybe I am really a girly-girl at heart, whatever the fuck that means.

* * *

The place fills up as it's supposed to, and the party begins to become an actual party. There's some very recognizable people here. Robbie, Cat, and I stand in the corner and point out all the famous people and talk about them behind their backs. Eventually, a few hours after we get to the party, Young Runaways comes into the hall to a chorus of cheers and flashbulbs and crowds. They eventually take the stage next to the DJ booth, all lined up and looking comfortable and looking stylish. Beck-the-drummer looks suave and cool and totally, desperately fuckable. That Andre guy ain't half bad either.

Luckily, I'm a little drunk and it's not hard at all to feel jealous and vindictive about how stupidly good Tori Vega looks with her smile and her designer dress. A tall, skinny man with coffee-lite skin and a suit similar to the one Robbie is wearing, stands next to them, holding a microphone. Everyone hushes and quiets up and I roll my eyes at Robbie, basically saying _can you believe this nonsense_ and he smiles back at me. Damn, even Robbie Shapiro, the dorkiest of dorks, is high on the fuckability scale tonight.

I should probably stop drinking. I give my current Cosmopolitan to Sinjin without explaining or saying anything. Of course he takes it with his creepy grin and no questions.

"Hello, and thank you for coming," says the tall man who isn't a part of Young Runaways. Judging by the sad and angry frown on Sikowitz' face, this man is Lane, their manager. "We appreciate your continued support and the success you bring to this band, each and every day."

There are cheers. Counter Memories listlessly clap along, except for Sandra, who has moved near the stage and is rapturous in her adoration. Sinjin claps harder more out of solidarity with his girlfriend than anything else, I think. Lane hands the microphone to Tori Vega, who beams out to the crowd.

"It is an exciting time for each and every member of my band," she says, motioning to her pals on the stage. "There are a lot of things planned, and we're here to announce the second phase of Young Runaways!"

More cheers. White balloons fall from the ceiling as video screens descend to a stop above the DJ booth. Some fast-paced, energy-pumping music starts playing, and a projector shows the first image.

An album cover. A vast desert at sunset, probably Joshua Tree in California. Tori Vega stands prominently in the foreground as the rest of the band presents itself, out of focus in the haze of heat in the background. Some text floats about the cover. "Game to Go, the new album coming this summer! A presentation of Roman Empire Records!"

There are massive cheers from the crowd, and I'm scrunching up my face, trying to remember something about something that Counter Memories talked about...about Young Runaways? The second album's never as good as the first, which I suddenly remember being something that was talked about briefly, I guess. Also the fact that Roman Empire Records is a massive, massive music label, and not the indie one they used to be on.

The next image is just Tori Vega and Beck-the-drummer. He sits next to her on a rooftop, holding an acoustic guitar. Tori looks out into the distance, trying to look deep. It makes me scoff out loud. "Roman Empire Records presents: Just Me, a Tori Vega Solo Album! Spring release!"

More cheers from the crowd. I share some knowing looks with the rest of Counter Memories. Sinjin's jaw is set pretty hard, his gaze intense. Cat looks confused.

Then the big thing comes up on the screens. Images of places around the world. Date-after-date-after-date. "Young Runaways embark on the biggest world tour ever!" More dates, more shows. Enormous venues. Out-of-the-way places. Stadiums, arenas, festivals, everything. I ache in jealousy. I briefly imagine playing a sold out show in Wembley Arena and feel sad that it's not happening.

How did I know that a Young Runaways party would just leave me bitter, annoyed, and depressed?

* * *

Late night or early morning or whatever. After the party. We're all drunk and faded and tired. On the subway, it's just me, Robbie, and Sikowitz. Our manager has been silent most of the ride over, and I think everyone is just tired and cold and strangely melancholic. One of those late-night-in-the-city feelings you get from time to time.

As he stumbles out of his seat and to the door to get out of his stop, Sikowitz turns to Robbie and I, who sit across the subway car from his exit.

"They turned a party that was supposed to be a thank-you to _us_ and turned it into a business meeting," he slurs out angrily. He's so emotional, he's almost in tears. "Never be that way. Please, please, please."

And with that, he's gone. A whoosh of the door, the ding of the sounds, the announcement of the next station. Sikowitz disappears into the night, leaving Robbie and I in a mostly-alone train.

"Something's been bugging me about tonight," Robbie says as we whirl around a corner. He looks pretty focused and thoughtful for a drunk guy.

"What?" I slur out. It sounds funny, so I giggle.

"Tori Vega," is his reply.

"Oh my God! She bugs me too!" I hug him hard. "You and me are best friends now, okay!?"

"Not her, exactly. What she said." He bites his lip. "She said _my band._ Everyone in _her_ band is excited." He looks at me, as if it means everything in the world.

"So?" I finally say.

"Don't you think that's a little weird? How would you feel if I said _my _band Counter Memories are excited for this stuff, instead of _the_ band is excited for this stuff?"

I admit it would bug me, but then again, I don't really care right now.

"It's hard to care when it comes to Tori Vega. Now, shut up. I'm sleepy," I tell him. I rest my head on his shoulder, letting the sounds of the night lull me to stupor. I can tell he's still thinking about whatever it is dumb Tori Vega said, though.

* * *

**A/N - This is my favorite chapter so far. It was tough to write, but it's setting up things that will pay off later. I hope you all love it!**


	17. Chapter 17

Sikowitz seems bitter at what had happened at the party. Some nebulous thing that he couldn't put his finger on. Or some nebulous thing that he wouldn't tell us.

So he pushes us into overdrive. I thought I was busy before, but not like this. Endless rehearsals. Band meetings. Sometimes we even play two shows in one day. There are stretches where I literally see Robbie, Cat, Sinjin, Sandra, and Sikowitz from the moment I wake up until the moment I sleep. The only break is for Christmas, and it's almost not a break at all. I go home for the holiday, cramming myself into a busy bus of crying kids and old people on Christmas Eve, only to cram myself back onto another one on Boxing Day night. By the 27th, we're playing shows again.

Sandra and I almost get fired from our jobs at the cafe, but we convince the manager to keep us on, despite our exhaustion and the fact that Sikowitz/Robbie/Cat/Sinjin all come to visit at various points in each and every day. Almost all of our Counter Memories money goes into subway fare for the gigs, or for the rehearsal space, or for t-shirt production, or repairing our instruments.

There's a brief moment of quiet, of not being part of anything related to the band. Robbie and I are sitting in the cafe, sipping on non-fat, organic, free-range, gluten-and-dairy-free hot chocolates, waiting for Sandra to close up the store. My whole body aches, and I stretch out in a chair next to the fireplace. Robbie's curled up, slurping loudly. It used to bug me, but somewhere down the line, I got used to it. I'm too tired to be bitchy-old-me these days.

"I'm noticing a change," Robbie says, apropos of nothing, really.

"In what?" I ask him.

"In our band," he says with a little smile. We're silent for a little bit, and he knows he's playing with me. He knows that his ambiguity is pinching at my brain a little, and I know he loves to give exposition.

"Fine, I'll bite. What's changing in our band?"

"Our gigs, our sales." Sales, meaning t-shirts of course. "We're playing the same places but...more people are showing up. We're almost getting to sold-out-venue status. Don't you notice?"

"Not really. I'm too busy having the spotlight on me, blinding me with its brilliance," I say with a jokey flourish akin to a movie-star diva, or Tori Vega. Robbie smiles, slurping again on his hot chocolate.

"It's true. We're almost selling out places now. We might even have a following," he says, smiling again. I can't ignore the smile, and smile back.

"Are you happy?" I ask him. "About the band?" He just shrugs at me.

"Sikowitz has been a lot of help," he replies.

"I hate to admit it, but yeah, he has been."

"Cat too," he tacks on.

"I love her designs. I wish Sikowitz would let us have more than two shirts but he says we're not big enough yet."

"He's probably right."

Sandra finishes up and we bundle up to head into the street. We stand outside the cafe as she locks the door and sets the alarm.

"Want to catch a show?" Robbie asks me. I nod.

"Yeah, I guess. It's been way too long," I reply. Despite being super-tired, I still feel like I don't want the night to end, really. "You in?" I ask Sandra, who turns around from her little chores.

"Sorry guys, no can do," she says, frowning. The same look of sadness or awkwardness I saw before the Young Runaways Party Of The Century shows up briefly, but she hides it.

"Aw, come on!" I say, and I share a hopeful look to her with Robbie.

"I've got a date," she says with a shrug. She's avoiding our gaze.

"What?!" I exclaim, letting a little girliness show through. "Wait! When have you ever had a date and never told me about it?"

Again she shrugs, and again, she avoids our gaze.

"I just have to go," she says. She gives a little wave and is off down the street and into the night. I look to Robbie.

"Weird," is all I say. But we shrug it off, and head in the opposite direction.

* * *

It's just like old times. Robbie and I out in the wilds of New York, by ourselves. We grab some late night burgers at a greasy place near NYU. As I take big bites of my wonderful, salty fries, Robbie scans through the indie newspaper for a gig that we can go to. We settle on some DJ showcase at some nightclub where there's no dress code and free cover if we get there in time.

We brace against the cold and get into the club, no big deal. We grab a drink and some seats and it's all hunky-dory-old-school-hanging out.

There's an early rule laid out that there will be no Counter Memories talk allowed, and that if one of us brings up things about our own band, we get a smack and have to buy the next round of drinks.

Somehow, we slip into talking about our band anyways.

I watch Robbie talk about gigs or plans. He perks up, gets excited, uses his hands a lot. He goes a mile a minute, his eyes darting to-and-fro. It looks good on him, and all I can do is smile as he throws out idea after idea after anecdote after funny story. It's like it's been building up inside of him for a long time and he's finally getting his chance to throw it out there.

It ends up being a really good night.

* * *

I wake suddenly to the sound of my phone buzzing. A text message at four in the morning? Maybe something has happened to my parents...but then it wouldn't be a text! What kind of stupid asshole monster would do this to me? And why couldn't I sleep through it? Stupid phone and its crazy-hard vibrations. I try to roll over and sleep, but it's impossible now that I'm curious about what the message says. I pull the phone off my bedside table and take a look. It's from Sikowitz.

_Urgent: Sandra quit. Band meeting at cafe, 7AM._

Wait, what?

I text him back, but he doesn't reply, because of course he doesn't. I try to get a hold of Sandra as well, but there's no answer. I toss and turn all night and don't get a wink of sleep before heading to the cafe. The place's manager/owner is there, glaring his little hipster glare at me, with his arms folded in front of him.

Robbie, Sikowitz, Sinjin, Cat. All at an empty table. All looking as tired as I feel. Probably all not-showered and grumpy and whatever else, just like me.

"You're little band is here," says my manager, who has beady little eyes and is never around, except for, well, when he wants to yell. "Not buying anything, as usual."

I just shrug at him, too annoyed and severely lacking in coffee to deal with any amount of anything today.

"This is your last warning," he hisses, low enough for just me to here. "They better buy something and stop leaving messes or else your ass is grass."

I nod. I realize he's probably pissed because an employee of his just up and left and now he's got to fill the holes. But whatever. I leave him stewing in his anger and plop down at the table next to Cat, across from Robbie. Sikowitz looks at me.

"So, what's this shit all about then?" I ask.

"Your friend quit," Sikowitz says. "Sandra is no longer part of the Counter Memories team."

"My friend?" I ask. "Robbie's known her way longer."

Dorkus looks at me with bloodshot, tired eyes behind his glasses. He shrugs.

"You're lumping us together because we're girls, or whatever?" I shoot towards Sikowitz. He's immediately defensive, waving his hands in front of him and leaning back in the chair.

"No. I just...thought...maybe you had some of the answers," he says.

"I don't. Sorry." I'm a little teed off at him. Who am I supposed to be? Nostradamus?

"We should probably let you know, then," Robbie says. Sikowitz bristles angrily again, a lot like how he does when the thought of Lane enters his head.

"Let me know what?" I ask.

"Sandra has...moved on..." Robbie starts.

"What? Died?" I ask, incredulous, because that would be a real stupid twist to things.

"No!" Sikowitz smacks the table, and I can see my manager in the background look to investigate the noise. "Those little shits at Young Runaways hired her away from us!"

"Wait, what?" I ask, even more incredulous than before. I look to Robbie and he nods.

"Why? Huh? What? Start from the beginning!" I demand.

"Sinjin saw her," Cat says, poking at the redhead, who had fallen asleep. His head shoots up. "Right, Sinjin?"

"Trina said that Sandra's their new touring manager and production assistant. Hopped on the plane to L.A. this morning to meet up with Lane and work out all the details," Sinjin tells us. He's kind of bummed out, too. Whether or not it's about Sandra or the fact the Trina is across the other side of the country preparing to tour, is still up in the air.

"Turns out when you have tons of money to pay someone, and that someone gets to work with her idols - not her _friends _I might add - then they'll snap up the chance to do it," Sikowitz says. "Young Runaways Incorporated, a division of Roman Empire Records LLC. The tiny music arm of Roman Empire Enterprises, one of the six corporations that own everything in the entire western hemisphere."

"She chose money over us," Cat says, radiating sad out of every syllable.

"Oh, man..." I say, trailing off, letting the weight of what's occurred and my exhaustion fill my bones. I look to Robbie for anything, but he just looks back in a sad way.

"This raises a major, major, problem," Sikowitz says. "Something I didn't want to get into, ever, but it looks like I have no choice."

We all look to him, and Cat takes my hand under the table. She's wide-eyed and scared, and I can guess that it's all about whatever her brother's been telling her.

"Spit it out," I tell Sikowitz.

"Do we want to keep going with Counter Memories?" he asks. "This isn't a test, like the early tour. Sandra's not going to pop up from behind the counter like it's a surprise party. It's this or nothing. Do we want to have a band that even their ardent supporters lose faith in?"

Cat grips my hand tighter, and I try to look at Robbie, who just avoids my gaze. He folds his arms close to him, hugging his grey hoodie tightly. Sinjin's out of his sleep stupor, looking kind of upset by life in general.

"You guys have come so far in so little a time. You're getting better at playing, more people are coming to your shows." Sikowitz, wonderfully, beautifully, seems kind of proud of us. A little bittersweet smile tugs at his lips. "It's do or die time. We all have to step their game up, myself included. We can't let the fact that one of our major supporters up and left us for something they thought was better. Even if it sucks something fierce."

He's not doing his dramatic thing. He's not enunciating, or proclamating, or acting like a reject of Hollywood Arts University. He's just...laying down the truth, as simple as it is.

"I'm not going to lie, or sugarcoat it," he goes on, pausing to let Cat giggle at the term 'sugarcoat'. "Things will be tough. It won't come easy. You thought it was tough before Christmas? It'll be a whole new level. It'll be all blood, all sweat, all tears. From here on out."

I look at Robbie, biting his lip in concentration. Cat's still holding my hand. Sinjin's still kind of bummed-out looking. I think about Tori Vega talking about _her band_ and what that means. And then I look at the scowling face of my cafe-boss.

What an organic, free-range, non-fat, motherfucking dickhead that guy is.

There comes a time in every young Jade West's life where she doesn't want to work for a dickhead anymore. She wants things to be her way, to show how special she is. And she wants to do that with her friends by her side. Because if things go good or bad, that's all she has left in the world. That even with all the things inside of us all, we'll still have little moments by the motel pool. We'll still have our strip club parties. We're stronger together, in a world that may not believe in everything we do.

I clear my throat a little.

"No more waiting tables," I say, almost too quiet for anyone to hear. "No more bullshit. No more scrabbling to make a buck." I stop and look at everyone, ending up on Robbie, who stares back at me with a fierceness that makes me blush a little. "I'm in. I'm in for good. We're going to kick some serious ass. We're going to straight up destroy Young Runaways."

"Then I'm in," Robbie says, with a big smile on his face.

"Me too!" Cat yells out, wrapping her arms tightly around me. Sinjin nods aggressively, a steely glint playing over his eyes. Sikowitz claps his hands together and is smiling once more.

"Alright then," Sikowitz tells us all. "Time for Counter Memories to conquer the whole wide world!"


	18. Chapter 18

The first one to quit their regular job in service of Counter Memories was Cat. She got out of the babysitting-slash-dogsitting business pretty fast. And she didn't seem down about it, at all. The next one to go was Sinjin, who left his job as a dry cleaner (which was a possible front for an animal smuggling ring) in the middle of an afternoon shift. He mentioned something about the "haunting, plaintive calls of the majestic orca" adding an interesting note to his exit, but no one really asked what that meant.

I still held on to the thought that I needed gainful employment, that my little cafe-bakery job was completely necessary to my sad little survival. But I didn't hold on to that idea for very long. Maybe it lasted about a week. Seeing Cat and Sinjin actually well rested and not biting their nails with stress was probably what did it. During a couple of our shows, I noticed that they were actually able to jump around the stage and put so much effort into our songs that it was pretty much amazing. A shift between night and day.

So I decided to quit my job. It honestly didn't take that big of a push. Three weeks after deciding to "go hardcore", as Sikowitz would say, I devoted myself full time to Counter Memories.

It was on the first close-to-warm day of the year, when the sun poked bright through the clouds and illuminated the crisp fogs of breath coming from people. I was looking out the large glass windows of the cafe, looking at the world outside and at everyone passing by, and wanting to be a part of it. I was completely exhausted from a gig the night before. Some really ugly and old customers had just tried to hit on me. I felt itchy and trapped. I had been having weird dreams of being stuck in a giant, strangely mobile, non-fat, gluten-free cupcake-muffin thing. It didn't take Freud to realize that I was experiencing anxiety about being part of the whole bakery thing. Outside there was promise. Outside was an exciting world. Inside here, I was on one track, riding the cupcake to...nothing at all.

So, much like the day I quit acting, which felt like a million years ago, I decided to just go for it and to burn bridges and blah-blah-blah. I yanked off my apron, looked my manager in the eye, and said I quit. I grabbed my coat, and rushed outside. Again, it was exhilarating. I could feel my face flush as I walked out the door, the only sound my manager's sputtering of disbelief.

Weirdly enough, I found myself compelled to visit Robbie, and let him be the first to know the news. Much like the time I quit my acting, I went to visit him at work almost right away. Again, it was an afternoon shift at the strip club.

I talked with Robbie about what I had done, and he sort of nodded solemnly, and kept looking at me with this weird, complex look that I couldn't place. The intensity in his eyes was something I had never seen before. He sort of looked like he had something to say, but couldn't really find the right way to say it. Or to have the courage to say it. But I didn't bring it up as I watched him and told my story.

Robbie decided that for now, at least, that there should be at least one person in our band with a regular job, and he supposed it would be him. Not that he had a choice or anything now.

"I don't think Sikowitz has a side job or anything," he says. "He dresses like he's homeless, anyways."

I laugh at that.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," I tell him. He looks faux-stunned.

"I guess there's a first time for anything, right? Jeez, you just admitted that I was right."

"Pfft, please," I said with a roll of my eyes.

He goes and changes the song on his laptop, and the dancer on the stage peels off her top. Robbie is so jaded by it all he doesn't even look. He just plops down in the seat and rubs at his face. He's tired from the previous gig. He looks like hell in this moment.

"Here," I say, getting up and going behind him. I massage his shoulders. I must be out of my mind. But I dig in to him and he loosens up. I don't know anything about massaging anything, really, but he seems like he's tight and knotted around the shoulders and neck.

"Feel okay?" I ask him. I can feel my face getting warm, a little red at the fact we're touching, and I'm glad he can't see my face right now.

"Yeah, it's great. I needed it." I stop, patting him on the shoulders to let him know I'm done. "Thanks a bunch."

* * *

Spring awakens the city, and the mood seems to lighten up quite a bit. Food trucks begin to enter the streets. People don't rush from one place to another. The sun shines a little more, and snow turns into light drizzly rain.

Tori Vega releases her solo album, "Just Me", with a Youtube video and a single on the radio called "Troubled Days". It sort of lands with a thud. Rather than lighting up people and burning through the scene like the first Young Runaways record, it doesn't really get talked about too much. The single does fine on the charts, holding out in fifth and sixth place on PearTunes for a while, before falling off. Unfortunately (for her, I guess) the album stays around the tenth spot of major lists for about two weeks before disappearing completely.

Robbie tells me that a second single is usually released quickly when the first one flops, and he's right. "My Own" is released when the album doesn't do so well, and it does about the same as the first single. The album does what it does before, moving back up to ninth or tenth spot before falling down into the twenties-and-thirties.

Counter Memories sits in Robbie's little apartment, listening to Tori Vega's album. It's a little piece of relaxation. We have a couple of drinks, sit around, and make fun of it. Yep, it's petty as hell. But we need our little piece of whatever because we need it as a consolation prize. Tori Vega is recognized by actual people and on the charts and everything - no matter what spot - while Counter Memories toils in obscurity. People buy our shirts but I've never seen anyone out on the street actually wearing one. Tori is on the cover of People Magazine talking about her romantic life with Beck-the-drummer. The rest of Young Runaways is voted "Coolest under 25" while Counter Memories couldn't land a newspaper article if they tried.

It's all just a way to blow off steam, to override our jealousy. At least, I feel a little bit jealous. Maybe it's just me. I don't know.

"Are you guys jealous of Young Runaways?" I ask as the fourth song from Tori's album plays. A plaintive, plain, dull piano ballad about love or whatever.

"Jealous?" Sinjin asks, tilting his head. "Maybe a little. Like, mostly because they have Trina, and she's not here and..."

"Enough with damn Trina already!" I yell out. "I meant of their success and stuff."

"Not me!" Cat says, sipping at her cotton-candy flavoured schnapps. "I like what we do! I like you guys! Not as many people hear our songs but our songs mean a whole lot more to me."

"That's true," Sinjin concedes. "I do like our songs more."

"Really?" I ask. "I thought their first album was, like, legendary," I comment, only a little sarcastically. Despite Tori Vega's album being very, very "meh", the Young Runaways still had respect, and still had their highly-anticipated second album to release later in the year.

"It's great," Robbie pitches in, to my eyes rolling. "No, don't roll your eyes. It really is great. But I agree with Cat and Sinjin. I'd rather listen to a Counter Memories album than to a Young Runaways album."

"Then let's make an album, an EP, anything!" I exclaim. Robbie shakes his head at me, and I get a little annoyed.

"Sikowitz says to back off from that," he starts, and I scoff.

"No, I get it," Sinjin interjects. Tori Vega's next song comes on. It's an overly-processed rock track with her trying hip-hop vocals. Easily the worst song on the album. "We don't want to blow our wad too early. We need to build buzz. Also, it costs, like, a shit-ton to make it sound any good and to have packaging and distribution and stuff."

Damn it, they're right. I shut my hole, choosing to sip my beer instead of arguing.

"We have strong enough stuff," Robbie adds on. "It'll be our time soon. I can feel it." It's amazing how he echoes my own thoughts sometimes.

* * *

Spring grows a little bit more, and with it comes a surge of Counter Memories everything. Gig after gig. Show after show. We play. We play harder and faster and longer than we've ever done. We play in crappy clubs, dive bars, good bars, good clubs, anywhere we can. Sikowitz steps up his game, and we become his sole focus in life. Well, us and coconuts, I suppose.

We're actually making money. Not big bucks or anything, but there's a slight level of comfort. It's fine to have money when there's nothing but food, rent, and music. There's no social life anymore so I mainly just spend my spare cash on the band. Just work, work, work. If this whole thing actually, completely gets somewhat super-successful, it won't be for lack of work ethic. Every gig, we're sore and sweating, and it feels like we've torn ourselves apart during every show.

"You guys are totally punk rock when you're up there," Sikowitz tells us with a big, proud smile. I don't know how Robbie gets up to go to work, when I can barely get up before noon after a gig. He doesn't complain though, and I silently acknowledge and admire his dedication.

Then Sikowitz really, really pulls through. At a band meeting in our rehearsal space, he approaches us with our newest assignment.

"I've booked you guys for the Burnout Music Fest, and for Citywide," he says.

"What are those?" Cat asks.

"Burnout? Like the energy drink?" I interject. Sikowitz points at me and does the finger gun thing to tell me I'm correct.

"Burnout is sponsoring a music festival to be held in Central Park in two weeks. Big acts, small acts. Typical music festival stuff. I have you guys opening each day over the course of the weekend," Sikowitz tells us. I share a look of surprise and shock with Cat and Robbie. Sinjin is already looking up the festival on his phone, checking out the other acts who are playing.

"Now," Sikowitz continues, "Being in the opening slot isn't the greatest place to be. People are coming into the park, people don't care who you guys are. People'll probably be buying snacks and everything else. But, it's your foot in the door. It's pretty great to be unsigned by any label and be a part of any festival at all. But you better thank me because that's the kind of thing that I can pull."

We give him some scattered applause to thank him.

"Citywide is the real challenge, though," Sikowitz starts. He pulls out his PearPad, an old model that is massive and doesn't have the better screen. After a few taps and swipes, he brings up a map of New York. "This is New York, obviously."

Another swipe across the screen, and about a hundred little red dots plop all over the city.

"Here's where you'll be playing over the course of a week during Citywide."

"Good gravy," Cat says, trailing off with a coo.

"In one week?!" I ask, disbelieving and incredulous. Sikowitz nods with gravitas.

"It's an industry showcase. They have similar things in Toronto and in Texas. Hundreds of bands from all over the world will be coming here to play over the week. Industry executives. Scouts. Record company parties. See? I told you it wasn't going to be easy."

I stare at the red dots for a long time, then look back to our instruments in their cases.

"We better practice a whole lot more," I say. And we go to it.

* * *

**A/N** - Thank you to everyone who has reviewed this story. Your outpouring of support and suggestions have been incredible! I know that this is a little bit of a filler chapter, but I want to do this story the right way. Naked Trina, touring, a familiar character or five, more Young Runaways, and a whole lot of crazy adventures are to come in the future! Stick around!


	19. Chapter 19

It's a crisp, cool weekend in mid-April, and it's the first day of the Burnout Festival. Friday night had been our soundcheck, with Counter Memories playing to an empty Central Park at night, running through our set. Now it was Saturday daytime, just after lunch, and I was fairly certain we would be playing to an empty park again.

The bands that were here were quite staggering. Big names. We hadn't seen any of them, but we had seen their tour buses, all parked along adjoining streets to the park. Their soundchecks had been after ours, and they wouldn't be performing until later in the day. So there was no reason for them to show up and watch a little band like us.

Backstage was just behind the stage, behind some rafters. Roadies milled about, looking bored that they didn't really have anything to do. Everyone seemed to be more interested/working for/waiting for other bands to show up and make the day more exciting. Plus these hardened roadies were old, and Counter Memories seemed to be babies to these people.

"I feel nervous!" Cat mentions to me as we sit on a gross couch waiting for our set to be announced. Five minutes, maybe. "This feels like a big show!"

I just shrug. I had tossed and turned for a bit last night, worried and nervous and excited, but I decided that I wouldn't push myself to get excited. It helped me fall asleep, and it definitely made me realize that Counter Memories ain't that big. Same old Jade, right?

"Maybe. But I wouldn't get my hopes up."

"My hopes aren't up! It's just...I dunno. It's a nice day to play. And it's exciting! And I feel like there's a million little puppies in my stomach that need lots of hugs and kisses!"

She bounces around her seat like a little kid, kicking her legs up and down. Robbie and Sinjin approach us, looking kind of electrified and energetic and annoying.

"We took a look outside," Robbie says as he plops next to me, intruding on my personal space. "It's a pretty decent crowd." Sinjin leans against a rafter, standing above us. It seems like we're all dressed in our spring hoodies. It bugs me as Robbie tugs at his sleeves with curled fingers.

"How many?" I ask.

"Hard to tell," Sinjin replies.

"About the same as what we normally play?" There's shrugs from Robbie and Sinjin. "Our normal amount, or what? 200? 300?"

"Hard to tell," Robbie echoes.

"Can you guys do math? Or is that too hard?"

Again, shrugs. But there's smiles there and I know that they're keeping something from me.

"Our first outdoor festival show..." Robbie says with a wistful look in his eyes, trailing off into daydream. I had caught him watching Youtube videos of massive bands playing British festivals. Crowds of ten thousand, lighters aloft as the band on stage delivered a soul-reaching anthem across the distance of miles.

Yeah, that ain't going to be us. First outdoor show, maybe-probably our last.

A backstage person with a laminated card approaches us and lets us know that it's showtime, and that we have a half-hour to fill with music. We all look at each other and put our hands in, like what a softball team does. We shout "Counter Memories!" and then we're heading to the stage.

This is the feeling. That crazy-slow-motion electric excited anxious feeling that occurs right before we hit the stage. Amplified because of the change in venue. It's like a drug, total and complete in the euphoria it sends through me.

Pushing through the side of the stage, we enter on to the main arena. It's large, and we're dwarfed by the size of the set we've got. It looks so much bigger - and I feel a whole lot smaller - in the day when compared to our soundcheck the night before.

Out in front of us is about six hundred people, and I'm stunned. About four times the size of what we normally play. I know that almost all of them haven't heard of us, or whatever. But it's still nice when they politely clap and let out some cheers as we approach our instruments. The sky is clear and it's sunny, so it's like every face in the sea of people watching us is as clear as crystal. I can see food stands and merch tables in the distance, and people still filtering in from the entrance all the way at the other end of the field. Skyscrapers tower around the oasis we're in, a real world outside of it all.

"Thank you, we're Counter Memories," I say into my microphone. It's kind of amazing how far it goes. I'm impressed by the sound system, and it feels comfortable. If there were thousands of people here, they all could hear us perfectly.

"1, 2, 3, 4!" Robbie yells into his microphone, clacking his drumsticks together in beat with his shouts. We begin to play, the days of rehearsals working to our advantage. People in the crowd bob their heads along to the beat, and I belt out some tunes, aiming for the merch tables and the entrance. I aim for the edge of the earth.

Despite the chill in the air, we end up sweating with effort, a slight sheen of satisfaction dabbled across our foreheads by the time our show ends. The crowd breaks out into cheers and claps as we give our thank yous and leave. It's a great feeling, and Robbie's patting my back as we exit stage right.

* * *

"What are you so happy about?" I ask Sikowitz as he bounds up to Counter Memories in the Denny's near the park. He drags a chair from another table with a long screeching noise, annoying the other customers. He plops down at the end of the table, still grinning wide. He's hiding something within his voluminous robes.

But he can't keep it to himself for long, and he pulls out an enormous wad of cash. More actual money than I've ever actually seen in one person's hand.

"Holy moly!" Cat calls out, but then realizes she's drawing unwanted attention to the cash floating around, and she zips her lips and opens her eyes wide, staring at Sikowitz in apology.

"Where'd you get all that?" Sinjin asks. It's sad, but we're all drawn to the money like a moth to a lightbulb. Part of me deep down suddenly understands why Young Runaways began to sell out.

"People came up after your show and bought out all of your t-shirts," he says with a little ta-da hand motion. "This is your t-shirt money!"

"Whoa," is what Robbie says. I make a reach for it - just to touch it for a second, honest! - but Sikowitz yanks it away from me.

"What the hell, man?" I ask, incredulous.

"Let me repeat myself," he says, holding up the wad again. "We sold out all your t-shirts. Even the ones for tomorrow and for Citywide next week."

"Okay, so print up more," Sinjin says, stating the obvious that Sikowitz has missed completely. "People do that sort of overnight thing all the time."

"Oh, I know," Sikowitz goes. "But it's going to cost..." he trails off. He takes a very large portion of the money away, stuffing it into wherever he puts things. He then gives us the leftover cash to split up. It's an alright cut of cash, but it's nothing at all like it was fifteen seconds ago.

"Fantastic," I drawl.

"Welcome to show business, kids," are Sikowitz' parting words before he leaves to figure out t-shirts and whatever else.

* * *

The second day of the Burnout festival isn't as populated as it was on the first day. Sikowitz tells me that it's because it's a Sunday, but the other part of me thinks it's the weather. Winter gives one last stubborn hurrah. By the time our set starts at around noon, the wind has picked up, and cold rain lashes around. We play to a grumpy, tired, cold, standstill crowd. They're still polite, and we still sell shirts, and still put on the best show that we can do, but it's not a triumph like the day before.

Robbie and I shiver in the subway station. He's been pulled into an emergency shift at the strip club, and is heading in the opposite direction. But I don't really want him to go. I've been feeling lonely after our shows. Empty.

"I feel like every time I get on stage, I let go of everything I know," I tell him, trying to share the loneliness. "I'm spilling myself out in front of an entire crowd. And at the end of the show, I'm...nothing."

He looks at me from behind his glasses, a little foggy and splattered with rain water. I don't look away from his eyes, and he's smiling.

"Then I think we're doing something right," he says. "If we're not letting ourselves burn as bright as possible, then there's no point."

"Are you being serious?" I ask him.

"Yeah," he says, rubbing the back of his head with his hand. "Maybe Sikowitz is influencing what I think about the band just a little bit, but it's all there. That's how I feel. The songs we've all written are pretty amazing. We're playing shows and getting great reactions. We've put ourselves out there, and I'm proud of what Counter Memories has accomplished so far."

His train squeals into the station and he's waving goodbye and he's on it, and then he's gone, disappearing with other commuters into the dark service tube. He can be a real dork sometimes, but he's got a point, about everything.

My train comes two minutes later, and I'm whisked off to the warmth of my apartment and my duvet.

I lie in the warmth. Naked, snuggled up, feeling like a tired, toasty cinnamon bun. My mind churns and turns over things like Counter Memories and Young Runaways. Counter Memories seems like a band of misfits getting together and trying to make a sound all their own. We're all a bunch of dorks. Whatever Sinjin is. Robbie's nebbish behaviour. Cat's childlike whatever. Half-goth-all-angst me. What the hell are we doing together? It doesn't seem like it should work, but it's seems to be going somewhere. It's a miracle it's going anywhere at all but we keep rolling through with it.

Young Runaways seems almost perfectly designed. Their album is good - great, even - but they're just...too good for their own good. Like those Korean pop groups you see where everyone looks perfect and seems to fill a role and all have the fake plastic grins plastered on their faces. Young Runaways are engineered to hit all the right pleasure centers of the brain.

I'd like to think that we're a little better, a little different than that. My thoughts as I fall asleep are of Counter Memories, and the places we might go.


End file.
